http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-02/bpl-hbc021207.php

Press Release:
>Public release date: 12-Feb-2007
>
>Contact: Becky Allen
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>44-012-235-70016
>Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
>How badger culling creates conditions for spread of bovine TB
>
>A stable social structure may help control the spread of bovine
>tuberculosis (TB) among badgers, ecologists have found. The findings
>-- published online in the British Ecological Society's Journal of
>Animal Ecology -- have important implications for the role of badger
>culling as part of the strategy to control bovine TB in the UK.
>
>According to the authors from the Central Science Laboratory and the
>Instituto de Investigacion en Recursos Cinegatico in Spain: "The
>evidence suggests that movement of individuals between groups may be
>instrumental in driving disease dynamics at the population level, and
>adds further support to the contention that the social disruption of
>badger populations, for example by culling, is likely to promote
>disease spread."
>
>Data for the study came from an undisturbed high-density badger
>population in the Cotswolds, Gloucestershire, that has been
>intensively studied by ecologists for more than 15 years. The authors
>analysed almost 9,000 trapping records involving 1,859 different
>badgers between 1990 and 2004. Each time a badger was trapped it was
>sexed, weighed and samples of blood, sputum, urine and faeces were
>taken before it was released. They found that TB rates were lowest
>when there was the least movement of individual badgers between
>groups.
>
>There have been few experimental studies of the incidence of
>infectious disease in socially-structured wildlife populations, and
>this study shows that such information is crucial to understanding
>how population structure affects the spread of disease.
>
>The results also have major implications for future policy to control
>bovine TB in the UK. According to the authors: "Past badger culling
>policies have been accompanied by an inexorable rise in the incidence
>of TB in cattle. Indeed, it has become apparent that the various
>strategies may actually have been a contributory factor to the
>increase in disease through perturbation. The results presented in
>this paper lend weight to this argument."
>
>"The development of successful strategies for the control of TB in
>badgers and transmission to cattle will require serious consideration
>of the likely impact of any interventions on badger social
>organization," the authors say.

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[Posted in FML 5517]