Badgers: Birds
Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire, Conservative)
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what assessment her Department has made of the effect of badgers on ground-nesting birds.
Richard Benyon (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Natural Environment and Fisheries), Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Newbury, Conservative)
The most recent relevant research by my Department is a report by the Central Science Laboratory (now Food and Environment Research Agency) in 2007, The ecological consequences of removing badgers from an ecosystem.' This report looked at the effect on ground-nesting birds, among other species, of the randomised badger culling trials. It is available on the DEFRA research web-pages as project ZF0531.