Badger social structure maintained despite selective culling
In their new study, Allen et al. present a case study in Northern Ireland (NI) showing how selective culling can be less disruptive to badger social structures than indiscriminate culling. This method could be an effective and more socially acceptable means of controlling bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in wildlife.
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has raised consciousness on the issue of human disturbance of ecosystems and how this may cause outbreaks of pathogens. ‘Spillovers’ from infected wildlife, causing disease in humans and domestic livestock, can wreak public health havoc and economic disruption.
These zoonoses have a complex epidemiology involving pathogens with wide host ranges. The latter can facilitate spread across dense contact and movement networks of multiple hosts – a Gordian knot that public health officials seek to unpick while advising policy makers on possible interventions.
Sometimes, advice can seem counterintuitive, be dependent on local contexts or can change as time passes…
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