Badger away

摘要

In England's meadows, a massacre is imminent. As Nature went to press, licensed marksmen were getting ready to take aim at badgers - a native species that is a known carrier of bovine tuberculosis (TB). By the time you read this, the first shots in a long and bloody conflict may have been fired. Scientists are outraged. Many researchers insist that the government has ignored the data in favour of a policy to appease farmers. But the evidence suggests something else: politicians have reviewed the science and have responded to it. The resulting policy is far from what many scientists would have hoped, but it is nevertheless based on evidence.