Appeal for the Cheshire Badger Vaccination Programme

The Cheshire Badger Vaccination Programme (CBVP) is raising funds so that we can offer badger vaccination to farmers and landowners free of charge and offer an alternative to badger culling, in order to control bovine TB in wildlife.

The Cheshire Badger Vaccination Programme is a volunteer led programme that receives funding from Defra from BEVS, however this is match funded and we need to raise funds for the remaining 50%.

CBVP vaccinates badgers across East and West Cheshire, in order that a 'firebreak' can be formed between the high risk areas and low risk risk areas for bovine TB (Cheshire is deemed an Edge area).

What your donations can buy:

£9 – box of syringes

£50 – 1 dose of vaccine

£55 – 25kg sack of peanuts

£45 – trail camera

£280 – portable fridge for vaccines

Please give what you can afford.

Badger Vaccination

CBVP strongly believes that vaccination of badgers against bTB should play an essential part in controlling this very difficult animal disease.

Badger vaccination involves humane trapping overnight, vaccination and release.

Badger BCG vaccine does not cure badgers if they are already infected with the disease but at the end of our vaccination programme, over several years in each site, the social groups that we will have treated will have a high level of resistance to the bTB disease.

The work involves adult badgers and cubs being humanely trapped and vaccinated by licensed CBVP operators, revisiting the same area annually for several years to ensure that a minimum of 70% of the local population has been vaccinated.

We are vaccinating badgers in large areas across Cheshire and this is made possible by our highly trained team of volunteers giving their time.

Please support the Cheshire Badger Vaccination Programme.

We need funds, volunteers and landowners/farmers who would like their badgers vaccinating.

Funds: You can donate via this page (thank you)

Volunteers: We need people to survey setts and pre bait traps and who are comfortable working outside.

Landowners/farmers: If you are a landowner/farmer who is interested in knowing more about the vaccination programme and what it entails, please email elaine@cbvp.org.uk with your contact details.

Background information

Bovine tuberculosis (bTB) costs the UK tens of millions of pounds every year and CBVP recognises the hardship that it causes in the farming community and the need to find the right mechanisms to control the disease, both in domestic animals and our wildlife.

Badgers play a role in the bTB disease cycle. BCG vaccination of badgers could be an important component of a comprehensive programme of measures to reduce the prevalence, incidence and spread of bTB. We hope our work will contribute to the local control of bTB in cattle by creating immunity in a population of Cheshire badgers, thus supporting local farmers whilst protecting badgers.

Badger BCG vaccination alone is not the solution to bTB, but it does have an immediate effect with no known associated negative impact other than cost. Our programme aims to make a worthwhile contribution towards finding a practical solution to a serious animal disease problem and our long-term goal is to ‘seal off’ the badger population in the endemic area with a barrier of non-susceptible animals.