Hello. It's Anthony Chadwick from the Webinar vet welcoming you to another episode of that chat. I'm super pleased to have Mark Jones on today.

Mark is the head of policy at the Born free Foundation. He's also a veterinary surgeon. An original thinker.

We go back quite a long way, and it's always good to talk to Mark, because, Mark, I think it's fair to say maybe I'm I'm gonna insult you a bit, Mark, but I'm gonna call you a contrarian. I think I'm a bit that way as well. I.

I like to disrupt. My wife tells me I if everybody's going in one direction, sometimes it's quite nice to go in the opposite direction, isn't it? And so great to have you on the programme today, Mark.

And, maybe give you a minute or two just for those people who don't know who you are, just to maybe give a bit of a backstory. Sure. So, thank you for inviting me on, Anthony.

It's always a great pleasure to to speak to you and see, So my name is Mark Jones. I trained as a vet at Liverpool university. I qualified in 1985 following which I spent, about three years in small animal practise.

Which it it became apparent to me at a fairly early stage that veterinary practise in the way that most people, perceive it probably wasn't going to be the path I was going to pursue long term, much as though I have a an enormous, love for animals. and particularly wild animals. I subsequently went to Stirling University and did a masters in aquatic, animal health and worked in in association with the aquaculture and fisheries, industries in Scotland for about 16 or 17 years, working on health and sustainability and latterly animal welfare related issues.

With that industry, at a time when it was difficult to talk about animal welfare and fish in the same sentence, I think it's perhaps become a little bit, easier to do so more recently. And I love the work. I've got to travel all over Scotland and and wonderful places like Norway and Denmark and Canada.

But I became increasingly concerned about some of the practises. I was seeing it aquaculture, particularly as, an intensive animal form of animal agriculture. And, particularly concerned for the way that, the industry, or the way that animals were that were involved in the industry were treated at times.

So I left the industry in about 2003, and my wife and I travelled extensively and worked, on a on a voluntary basis for quite some considerable time, in, wildlife rescue and rehabilitation centres initially in Ecuador in South America and then latterly in Thailand. Where we, worked with all kinds of animals. Bears, primates, lots of primates, birds, reptiles and many others, many of which were victims in in one way or another of wildlife trade, particularly for the pet trade, but also for other purposes as well.

So many of the animals that came into the centre were were victims of trade. And that got me interested in the wider issue of wildlife trade and trafficking and the impact that it has not only on the welfare of the individual animals that are that get, tied up in that trade. But also on the impacts that it has at a population level and at a conservation level for wildlife and the wider impacts that has on biodiversity as a whole.

So I came back, I did some. I did a further master's, at the Institute of Zoology in London. And since then, for about the last, 16 or 17 years, I've been working in the NGO animal protection world for various different organisations.

But for the last 10 years, I've been with born free. And, I think what I like and why I feel most at home at Born free is because as an organisation, while it does focus a lot on wildlife conservation, it always has a very, very strong consideration for the individual animal and the importance of protecting the well being of individual animals and why that's important for wildlife conservation. So, yeah, that's that's my story and obviously really interesting campaign at the moment mark around with born free around big cats and that whole area that they roam in.

You know, a tiger will roam in, you know, many hundreds of kilometres of of territory and then suddenly, you know we put them in a zoo and they're in a reasonably small enclosure. So I know born free works on the principle that we shouldn't have zoos. You know, I think obviously, Virginia McKenna, you know, that whole born free film was very instrumental in in me having the love of animals, you know, wild and domesticated, as you have.

Probably one of the first films that really anthropomorphized animals to some degree, but also showed them as individuals. You know, Elsa was a real life individual, Wasn't she In, in, in Kenya. But then other people like James.

Harriet, You know David Attenborough. Obviously, Gerald Durrell, who founded Che Jersey Zoo were very important to me as well. So II, I remember going to Chester Zoo and seeing the polar bears pacing up.

Well, one polar bear pacing up and down, you know, as a vet student starting in Liverpool just as you left, we could see that stereotypic behaviour that we see in horses, you know, stable too too long. There's certainly some species that we really shouldn't keep in zoos and obviously polar bears. You know, one of those and hopefully you you can fill us in on that, but hopefully they're not being kept anymore.

But I think big cats do start to come into that picture particularly, I suppose, from an educational perspective, we now have these splendid programmes David Attenborough and others make. We can learn so much just from watching those animals in the wild, which is probably much more realistic than watching them in a relatively small enclosure, isn't it? Yeah.

I mean, I, I think it's important to remember that, born born free these days does lots of work in different parts of the world. We have conservation programmes in parts of Africa and India. We have, education, community outreach and, programmes in the UK and also in parts of Africa.

We do rescue and care work where we, move some animals from very poor captive conditions to sanctuaries and where we can, for rehabilitation and release into the wild. Although, you know, in many cases, that's not possible. And, we run or or or collaborate with sanctuaries in, Ethiopia, in South Africa and in India and others.

And we do the policy work that I have some responsibility for. But the thing that prompted the creation of the charity in the first place, it wasn't actually Elsa the lioness. Interestingly, it was an elephant, an African elephant female African elephant called Poly Poly.

Who, was the one of the stars of the yeah of an elephant called Slowly. The film was which also starred Virginia McKenna and her husband, Bill Travis. As you know, as had born free the film which they're perhaps more famous for.

But an elephant called slowly was released in 1970 after filming, and in spite of the protestations of the actors Poli Poli the elephant, Very young elephant, who was born in the wild in Kenya, was gifted by the Kenyan government, to London Zoo, where, sadly, she died in very poor circumstances alone in 1983. And it was that event, really, that that prompted, Virginia and Bill to to set up the charity, which was originally called zuzek. Set up in 1984 the year after Poly Poly died.

So it's our this has been our 40th anniversary year. And it was originally focused on highlighting the plight of wild animals, in captivity in zoos and other captive environments. And all the associated, welfare concerns, around that issue.

So, yeah, we've, you know, we we we do, work on the basis that we'd like to see a world where we don't hold animals in captivity for the purpose of human entertainment. And that's how we how we view zoos. Now, I know that, zoos, there are many, many hundreds of thousands of zoos across the world, and they come in all kinds of different shapes and sizes and all kinds of different things, and hold all kinds of different animals in all kinds of different conditions.

Zoos aren't a homogenous group, but I think, in recent times, the zoo industry, perhaps you'd call it the more responsible end of the zoo industry. The big zoo associations and so forth, have tried to, if you like, rebrand zoos as centres of conservation and education. But I think while some zoo associations and zoos themselves do conduct or contribute, funds or resources or expertise to conservation programmes, and you know, very much accept that, and many zoos do operate what they claim to be educational programmes, like school visits and talks And, you know, opportunities to learn about animals and so forth.

We really question the, the validity of those claims and whether the conservation benefits or educational benefits that you might, see, from from zoos outweighs the the cost to the welfare and well being of animals that are held in zoos. Many animals that are held in zoos that really don't, lend themselves or or adapt wealth to life in captivity. So there's the obvious species, like elephants and, polar bears and giraffes and big cats, that clearly suffer.

And I think the more we learn about animal behaviour, the more we understand and realise how these animals suffer in captivity. And, of course, great apes, and other primates, but many others suffer as well. I always remember seeing the wild dogs at London Zoo when I was doing my masters at the Institute of Zoology next door and the repetitive pacing that that small group of wild dogs, conducted in a tiny enclosure when you think about the, complexity of the environment that that truly wild, wild African wild dogs live in and the complexities of their social interactions with each other within their packs with other packs with their wider environment.

Those are things that are completely taken away from them in a captive environment. And those animals that I saw walking past that enclosure every day, circling around and around and around you can see the tracks that they'd made in the enclosure, were clearly, psychologically distressed by their experience. It reminds me when I was a student, I went to Zimbabwe and we went, doing some work.

I always tried to combine EMS with a bit of travelling, and I remember getting up early and, going into Wang National Park and seeing a group of about 10 dogs trotting across the road, which was, very, very memorable. And I, you know, they're probably one of the most efficient killing machines. But track and and, hunt animals over huge distances, don't they?

I think the problem mark for me would be that were losing biodiversity all the time. You know the world, the WWF report came out very recently. 73% of wild animals gone since 1970.

To put that into perspective, you know, there were four animals in 1970. There's now only one, and I always talk about, you know, sparrows. In my lifetime, we've lost about 30 million sparrows in the UK.

So the conservation work that we are doing in the UK and further a field, you know, in nature reserves, et cetera, et cetera, is clearly also not working. And there's all sorts of reasons for that. And we're now having these cop, you know, conferences.

Obviously, we had cop 29 which was on carbon. I know Cop 16 has been going on. We've just had the plastics, conference that has found no agreement on how we'd reduce plastic.

You know, I see these as the three huge problems, and yet we end up having three separate meetings on them. Are we in danger of siloing all this because clearly, whatever we are doing, we are living in a more and more nature depleted world. I was at the Royal College's Fellowship Day last week, and the the gentleman was from Rewilding Scotland.

And I think of the 240 nations Scotland, which, you know many of us in Britain would see as a wild place is I think it was about 212th. Most, you know, depleted by a diverse country in the world, and England and Wales, I think were below rather than above. So for us that you know, that shifting baseline we look at Scotland and we say wilderness.

But clearly it isn't that so, within all of that, surely you know, I look at, like the Nini Goose at WWT. You know, Peter Scott brought them back from extinction, has now taken them back to Hawaii. There has to be some places for that.

Gerald Durrell did great work with the pink pigeon and the Mauritius Kestral. So we've got to get better at actually protecting our animals in the environment that they're from. And so far, I.

I can't really give us a, you know, an a star for that work. Because over the last 50 years, we look as if we've been doing pretty poorly. Yeah, I think that's all true.

The you know, you you mentioned the, climate talks, obviously at cop 29 recently, in Abu Dhabi, the, biodiversity talks under the Convention of Biological Diversity, which took place in Colombia in October, Cop 16 and the plastics treaty and discussions that have just been happening. I'd add to that the, efforts or attempts under the World Health Organisation, to create an international agreement on preventing preparing for and responding to pandemics. And we should remember that you know, the most emerging infectious diseases in people are genetic.

In other words, they're derived from animals, and most of those originate in wildlife. But it's only when we disrupt and stress wild animals that we see these pathogens emerging and mutating and potentially spilling over and having the opportunity, to move perhaps to other animal species and ultimately onto people. But all of those discussions are happening in in isolation from each other.

And although I think there is a gradually increasing recognition among many that all of these issues are interrelated and we can't solve one without addressing the others, nevertheless, we still speak to them. We we still talk about them in silos and the representatives, the really frustrating thing is in in many ways that the representatives of governments who attend these meetings and who are there responsible for, you know, expressing their government's view on on on the issues and and voting and so forth are often from different departments of of government. And often those departments don't really communicate or speak to each other very much.

So we talk to the guys all the time in in the UK and in other countries who work on, animal welfare and biodiversity issues. But they don't necessarily know what's going on at, in Geneva at the, at the talks, aimed at, preventing or or preparing for future pandemics. Or they don't necessarily know what's going on at the climate talks, because it's a different people from a different department who who attend those that they don't really speak to.

So we need much more joined up thinking, and we need to realise that, you know, biodiversity is in crisis, partly because of climate change, but also mainly because of, human, exploitation, use of land, land use, change and so forth and development. But biodiversity of also offers us one of the biggest potential solutions to climate change. Because if we protect biodiversity, bio biodiversity acts as an enormous carbon sink.

You know, preventing, much of the release of of, of, global warming, substances into the atmosphere, and protecting biodiversity and preventing, our, disruption of it And, you know, dealing with things like wildlife trade and trafficking, where individual wild animals or groups of wild animals are are put in situations which are completely alien to them, and stress stresses them and brings them into close contact with other animals and people. Protecting biodiversity from those, kinds of stresses and animals and those kinds of stresses is also key to preventing future pandemics. You know, and I, I guess.

You know, with many vets being an audience to this podcast, they they'll hopefully understand why, because, you know, it's when you stress animals that that they tend to, express pathogens. The pathogens get the opportunity as they're immune, suppressed to to, And as we cut down forests, we're we're, as you say, coming in closer contact. Yeah, and I think it's really interesting.

You know, the the example there of, you know, not only because I think we have to accept that the climate crisis is upon us. And so things like mangroves obviously sequester carbon. They also, you know, hold beautiful animals in them, so biodiversity will be increased.

But then also, they act as barriers against, you know, sea rise rises and typhoons. You know, I know that, climate related disasters are up 83% in the last 20 years, according to UN figures. So we have to also mitigate against some of these things that we are seeing.

I mean, I do a talk. I've been around, you know, on several veterinary events. Sometimes it's a month or two apart, and each time I start the presentation with some of the disasters that have just gone on and their new disasters all the time, because we don't have to.

You know, if I said to you talk to me about the disasters that are climate related in the last year, you don't just name one or two. You can probably reel off, you know, five or 10, can't you? So this is becoming more of a problem.

I do at the same time. Always feel that as a man of hope, we can turn this ship around, Do you see? And obviously, you know, some of that will be looking, I think, at what is really nice and realistic at the UN STGS because they cover all of the areas.

And you know that thinking around mangroves, is one of those examples. But do you think that vets are part of the climate crisis or in I like to call it an environmental crisis? Because I think when we talk about climate, that means we just talk about carbon, Whereas environmental, I think, covers plastic and biodiversity as well.

Do you think that vets are part of the problem, or are they part of the solution to the environmental crisis? It's it's It's a very interesting question, I. I think you have if we if we talk about you know, the veterinary professional, the veterinary industry, depending on how you look rather than individual vets, because individual vets do all kinds of different things.

And many individ individual vets do the most wonderful work, in all kinds of respects when we're talking about, You know, the, impacts on the lives of individual animals or whether we're talking about the impacts of the lives of many, many animals through, the conservation related work or the, you know, the animal welfare related work that that vets the vets do and, you know, disease control and health, health planning and all that kind of thing. But I think so. I think vets have an enormously important part to play, but it's a part, you know, we're trained in animal health and to an extent in animal welfare.

I think, at times there's a tendency to, over, emphasise the role of vets in animal welfare at the expense of other, people from other disciplines who have a very important, part to play when we're talking about our attitudes towards the welfare and well being of animals. What we understand about animal sentience and so forth. And, and how we need to incorporate that into the way we treat animals and ultimately into government policies about you know, how animals are are treated and protected through law and so forth.

So, you know anthropologists and, and philosophers and, behaviourists and so forth all have a a huge part to play here. In addition to vets, I think vets tend to be the go to place for the likes of governments and decision makers. Because we're a relatively easy profession to identify because we have We're a profession that requires a certain, level of, qualification and that there are consequences if you get things wrong.

So, you know, there, there there are ways and means of of, regulating the veterinary pressure, which is more difficult when you talk when you talk about, you know, the wider disciplines that have an important role to play. And I think because vets are primarily trained in animal health and animal health is only one aspect of animal welfare. That tends to be somewhat limiting in some respects in, the, the the broadness.

If you like, of the advice and the work that vets can do, in the in the con context of these much bigger issues that we're talking about these much bigger crises, we do have a role to play. Vets also play? A very significant part in supporting livestock industries.

But of course, livestock industries, have also been implicated, in in the climate crisis. And there are all kinds of, you know, issues around, the role of livestock industries in the in the transmission mutation transmission of potentially zoonotic pathogens, which can, you know, can can also affect wildlife and potentially people as well. So I think, you know, if you try and step back, you know, I think, there there's a vet who's perhaps working in the livestock industry, has his primary focus on supporting his farm clients, his or her farm clients.

But I think if you try and step back from that and look at perhaps the way we need to rethink, at a global level, the way that, animal agriculture operates in order to reduce the negative impacts that it has on animal welfare on potentially on health and also on climate in particular. If if I can just interrupt just for a second, because we haven't really talked about it, but I think it's a lovely concept, and it's something that I think, You know, I've certainly felt and done kind of naturally, most of my veterinary life is that whole one health concept, which is very much if we're looking after environment. If we're looking after humans, if we're looking after the animals, we're probably going to be doing a much better job.

And it was really interesting at the, rewilding talk given on last Thursday at the Royal College Day, the Royal College Fellowship Day. Sometimes I think vets can act as bridges between parties, so farmers and environmentalists often historically have not got on well. But actually now, with some of the changes we're seeing in things like biodiversity net gain Peter was talking a lot about rewilding.

But I would then say Well, rewilding can go is a spectrum from regenerative agriculture which could be agroforestry, which could also be, you know, the biodiversity net gain so that we set aside some land, which is what we've done for generations, rather than pilot with inorganic phosphate and and nitrogen and so on. And by having these areas, semi rewilded, they act as corridors for those nature reserves and those landscape type areas that we are starting to return back to a more natural, perspective. Because obviously, we also have to grow food in its different forms for the population as well.

And and maybe that's an area that that can give much more advice in with the environmental land management systems that have now been suggested by, you know, the governments and so on. So this is maybe one of the areas where I can see that vets can have a very natural place to to start bringing those environmentalists and farmers together that actually they share a lot in common. Quite often, we have these disputes.

And when you break it down, one of the advantages of the forum the Green Forum is just sitting down and listening to people. You suddenly realise that actually, maybe these huge barriers aren't quite as huge as you thought they are. I don't know what you think of that, Mark.

Yeah. I mean, you know, I think that, you know, there there are some really good initiatives. Agri environment initiatives.

As you say that, that are coming forward all the time and looking at the way that we utilise land and how we can, manage land, better in order. Not only to improve food production, but also to, to enable nature to recover and with with all the benefits that that that gives. And I think vets have a role to play that not only vets, but I think, as you say, what we what we always benefit from And I would say that those schemes are there are some really good schemes available.

They're not happening quickly enough. I think most of us would agree with that. When you when you look at what's happening with the climate, when you look at what's happening with biodiversity, these are crises that we're not dealing with quickly enough either at a national level or at a global level.

But But there are some really good schemes out there, and vets clearly have, the veterinary profession clearly has an important role to play in the development, and the implementation of some of those schemes. But I think it needs to do that in collaboration and in discussion with people from other disciplines, so we shouldn't be relying on the veterinary profession to come up with all the answers because our training at the end of the day is quite narrow. Or that certainly the way I view it, having been through the training OK back in the 19 eighties.

And I do talk to them students, Masters students who have done veterinary undergraduate courses these days. And I think the way that the veterinary training, the training at veterinary colleges is is conducted these days is a little bit different from the way it was conducted in my day as it were. I hope it is, anyway.

But, it's still quite narrow, and it's in it. It's There's so much to pack into it that it's actually quite difficult to find the space in the course and in the brains of the people who are trying to take in all this information that's being thrown at them, particularly with the complexity of of modern medicinal and surgical techniques and so forth that people are being expected to take on board, which is getting which is increasing all the time. It's difficult to get some of these wider discussions into the curriculum, so people people are coming out of veterinary college with perhaps less of a a broad view than we'd like them to see.

And many of them, obviously, you know how, create further opportunities for themselves to broaden their horizons, and that's great. This is one of the things I talk about. You know, when you go to vet school, you have to pass certain exams to become a vet, and the curriculum is set for you.

Whereas we all once we qualify, we set our own curriculum. You know, I did dermatology. I've moved much more into this whole environmental area.

I've spent the last two years studying a lot about economics to try and understand how we can make changes. And actually, some of the finance companies are well ahead of us 100 million, donated by Aviva, which is an insurance company to people like, WWT. Because they realise that if they can mitigate against flooding using wetlands, which also improve biodiversity, they probably will have to pay less money out.

It's always cheaper to prevent a disease than to wait till the disease strikes like foot and mouth disease, and then have to do something about it. So it's, I think we have that degree, which is such a good base on which to then develop, you know, as you've done into the conservation and and, policy areas and other people do other things. I want to finish, Mark, because I think what the as far as I'm aware, the way we met was, I did a webinar with BB a which was very much around the badge, and you quite rightly said, Well, that was one position, which was the BB A's position.

And we then did a webinar with you, which was very much more around the other side of the argument, which was that the call should not happen. I would imagine that's 567 years ago. Now you will be able to tell me better than than I can.

It's probably always longer than you think. So, when did the cult start? So, the culls culls actually started.

Licence culling actually started, under the, sort of government policy at the time in 2013 and 10 years. Yeah. And since 2013, we've had, around in 2013.

They licenced two zones in Gloucestershire and Somerset as the kind of pilot cull zones. Since 2013, I think we've had culling. I'd need to check the figures.

I haven't got them in front of me in in about 72 zones covering about three quarters of the land area of what's called the high risk area and parts of what's called the edge area. The high risk area in England. It's all in England.

They don't cull, in any substantive way in Wales. So the highest area of England is is largely in the West and southwest. But it covers a fair bit of the country.

And, you know, A a huge chunk of that is has been or is now subject to bad culling. And according to government figures since 2013 around two, Hun up until the end of 2023 we haven't had this year's figures yet. Around 230,000 badgers have been culled under licence.

That's nearly a quarter of a million badges. That's an awful lot of animals. So I've always argued that where the I you know, I would argue that the evidence for Badger culling being an effective way of reducing the spread of TB in cattle is at best equivocal.

At worst, I. I just don't think it's there. I don't think it's credible, but at the very best, it's equivocal.

You know, there are 10 years now, Mark is TB going down in the cattle population, or is it staying the same? Or is it going up by the measures that they used? TB?

It varies in local at a localised area, but countrywide in England and in Wales, TB has been slowly reducing from its peak of a few years ago in terms of both incidents, rate and prevalence. But it's been reducing in a roughly similar way in the high risk areas of England than it has in the high risk areas in Wales. But in Wales they don't cull badges, so it's not just about whether TB is reducing.

It's about whether you can identify that badger culling has had a major influence on that reduction because, of course, lots of other things are happening at the same time. In terms of changes in testing, intervals in terms of biosecurity requirements in terms of of of, and hygiene and all of these All of these things, have also been introduced in areas over the past few years. So, and it's now become very difficult to take any one of those factors out Badger culling, being one of them and and say this has been responsible for this reduction in bovine TB because it hasn't been designed as a big, big, you know, a big scientific trial, and we don't have the controls to compare against, but when we very broadly look at what What's happened in the areas that have been culled and we try and compare that to areas in the high risk area of England that haven't been culled and obviously the the proportion of those areas have gone down and down as more and more areas have been licenced for culling.

But we published a paper, two or three years ago, now in the veterinary record, which tried as best we could to compare data from areas that had been culled with areas that hadn't over the same period of time and we couldn't find any difference in the pattern, the overall pattern of bovine TB in those areas. Obviously you get differences in localised areas. But overall, we saw no no significant difference at all that we could associate with Badger culling.

Now, obviously, other people have published papers, which they claim do show a difference. But I think the evidence some of that contradictory evidence is at best, equivocal. We've got a situation in Wales where bovine TB has also been reducing, presumably because of the, because of the, measures that have been introduced cattle based measures that have been introduced over recent years, where they haven't coal badges.

So I think at at best, it's it's uncertain and in in a case of uncertainty, to continue culling when you've already killed the best part of a quarter of a million native animals at a time when our biodiversity is already in crisis. Seems, irresponsible certainly to me. And there are all kinds of animal welfare issues here as well.

Around the methodology, the predominant methodology that's called controlled shooting, effectively shooting badges. I remember seeing a video of badgers being able to go into the cattle houses and eat the food, which obviously, if you can stop those sort of things, there's there's really important areas having said all of that and I'll go back to the rewilding talk and, should we be introducing links into the country. And backward way of saying it because I was speaking to another vet and who lives in Devon is is, within the countryside and said whilst he perhaps sided with you on the whole point of Is it effective from a TV perspective?

What he was seeing was a lot more hedgehogs in the area. And we know hedgehogs are in crisis as well. Actually, urban hedgehogs probably doing better.

The stuff that I see than rural hedgehogs. I have two or three in my garden most days there. I think they're now having a K for a few months, so I probably won't be able to see them.

But, sometimes you can see the urban environment is actually more biodiverse. We're putting, you know, more wildflowers in et cetera. Whereas farms can be quite sterile, Monocultures of grass is the review.

You know, with deer obviously reaching plague levels at some areas are badges at that level where they are disrupting hedgehogs because we don't have those apex predators anymore. There's no doubt that badgers can predate on hedgehogs. They predate on ground nesting birds and eggs, and so forth.

But the, the evidence that I've seen from the likes of the, people's Trust for Endangered Species and the Hedgehog Preservation Society and and others is that, badgers are not a major cause of disruption for hedgehog. There are other factors that are affecting, hedgehog populations, particularly in our rural environments. We know about the factors in the in the urban environments and the same for grow ning birds.

Interestingly, I was just reading a piece, on the People's Trust and Endangered Species website today analysing some of the data, and the, and the British Trust for Ornithologist Website looking at data on ground nesting birds and an analysis of you know, whether the culling of badgers has made has had a significant impact. And overall, it doesn't seem to have done so. So, but again, you know, that's not why badgers are being culled.

Badgers are being culled, ostensibly to control TB in cattle, the incoming to politicise this a little bit, the incoming Labour government, in its manifesto, described Badger culling as ineffective If it's ineffective, controlling TB in cattle, there's no legal basis for issuing any more licences because that's the only legal basis on which the licences have been issued. And to to look at this in the sort of wider sense There was a really interesting paper published, I think back in about 2017 by Sarah Dubois and others, called, international Consensus principles for ethical wildlife control and what it did, it set out a set of principles A as a guideline, if you like, or decision tree if you like, set of seven principles that the, it, a whole a large group of Ecologists and conservation scientists and ethicists and others had come together to put to to to put this paper together in order to guide decision makers when they're thinking about introducing some kind of wildlife management measure, whether it be culling or some other measure. And, the, you know, the the the first thing that they ask you to think about is what's what's the problem here and how do we solve the problem?

And do we need to intervene with wildlife in order to solve the problem? Or can we solve the problem by changing human behaviour and our interaction with wildlife? And there are a whole bunch of, other steps that they recommend.

And, we've been promoting this as a as what we think is a sensible, and sound way forward for considering what action you might take. When you perceive there to be an issue in which wildlife is involved and where some kind of wildlife management might be necessary. So what?

We're encouraging decision makers to do when they're looking at the Badger Cull. We're obviously 1011 years into badger culling. Now, whether you're looking at any other form of wildlife management, whether it be some form of pest control or whatever, is to look at these principles and take them into account, and you might find that by thinking a little bit outside of the box, the solutions you come to a much you know can solve some of the problems that you perceive without necessarily causing, causing such havoc and devastation for for for wildlife.

So I think it's really important that we try and think a little bit differently about some of these issues. Yeah. No, it's It's, really good to get a a quick sort of pricey on where we're up to with that.

So thank you so much, Mark. I've, as always, podcast. I learned so much by, speaking to ate people like yourself, Mark.

So thank you so much for agreeing to come on the podcast and, hope everyone who's been listening has enjoyed it as well. Just as a before we finish, you know, at the webinar that we're now going to be running the fourth Veterinary Green Discussion forum. This is developing really to We want to be at a point where, you know, as a profession, we are halving our carbon as an industry.

We're halving our carbon. 30 by 30 is a concept that most governments and NGO S are working towards. You know, that whole principle that 30% of our, green space should be of high biodiversity value and then of course.

You know, I've just done a course on circular economy. We're actually becoming less circular rather than more Because of our increased production of plastic, it's set to double in the next 20 years, so we've got some really big challenges. But I you know, I do agree with you that that's working in in tandem with other professions like farmers.

Like conservationists, governments as well, because we are trusted, you know, with governments. As you said, hopefully we can continue to to make a difference, as you are doing in in the great work you're doing with ball free and just thank you. And obviously Virginia and and her son, for all the great work you're doing at ball free, thank you very much indeed.

Thanks for the opportunity and just to plug born free. If anyone's interested in these issues, they can go to our website, which is WWW dot born free.org dot UK.

And we will, of course, put all of that information at the bottom of the podcast. Those of you who feel that you can contribute to born free's really important work. I.

I know. It's, it's a great charity and well worth supporting as well. Thank you very much.

Thanks so much. Mark. It's been great speaking to you as always, And, hopefully not too long before we speak again.

Thank you. And thanks everyone for listening. Hope to see you on a podcast for a webinar or who knows, even at the Veterinary Green Discussion forum next year, we're taking it into Europe to the south of France.

So if you're interested, get in touch and, yeah, hopefully see you there. It's, it's a big problem, but humans are creative, and I think we can solve it. So hopefully we will see you at a podcast or webinar at an event very soon.

Take care and have a great rest of the day. Bye bye.