Brian May is a modern-day polymath – guitarist, astrophysicist, and defender of badgers. May famously gave up studying astrophysics to play guitar for Queen, but he returned to his studies and belatedly earned his PhD in 2007. In addition to continuing his work in astrophysics, May also spent the last 12 years studying bovine tuberculosis. The disease costs the UK $130 million a year and results in the slaughter of 20,000 cows.
Badgers have long been thought to be the source of the TB, but May questioned whether the stripe-faced mustelids were really to blame. The UK government's decision to issue 'culling' permits for badgers has resulted in the loss of over 130,000 of these animals since 2013. The Save Me Trust, a wildlife charity co-founded by May and his team, has not yet published their findings, but they have discovered strong evidence that cattle are being infected by eating the dung of other cows, not by airborne infection from badgers.
On Robert Reid's farm we, for some time, had a healthy herd with an infected population of badgers around it. And all through this period, almost 10 years, there's never been a single infection from the cows that could graze in the fields, near where the badgers live. All have been in the sheds.
There is also a farmer in Tiverton who built an amazing fence five miles long around his beef herd, to keep the wildlife out. Eventually he lost half his herd. How did that happen? It's highly likely that a new bull — shown as healthy by the skin test — is the way this herd became destroyed. It's likely that this is a pattern we've seen in many other places as well. I would like farmers to see the documentary and think, OK, maybe we're ready for a change. We need to change so many methods in cattle farming to solve this problem.
Nature
A BBC documentary, "The Badgers, the Farmers and Me," about the team's work and findings will air in the United Kingdom on August 23.
Bonus: Badger badger mushroom
Previously: How astrophysicist and Queen musician Brian May made his own guitar
