Badger setts are to appear on farmers’ Basic Income Support for Sustainability (BISS) maps in 2024, Department of Agriculture officials have confirmed.
The move is aimed at informing farmers where the setts are on their land, so that they can fence them off from cattle.
Dr Damien Barrett, superintending veterinary inspector at the Department, told last week’s Oireachtas committee on agriculture that it is an “impossible task” to fully identify badger setts, regardless of how many people the Department puts on the ground.
“We rely on the farming community to tell us about the location of setts. Next year, we hope all identified setts will be on the Basic Income Support [for Sustainability] maps when they are issued so that if people are not aware of setts on their land they will become aware of them.
“We want to know where they are,” he said in response to Roscommon-Galway TD Michael Fitzmaurice.
Dr Barrett also said that in the year to date the Department has captured more than 8,000 badgers for vaccination.
“This is an increase from approximately 1,900 in 2019. Since 2019, apart from 2020 when there was a reduction because of COVID-19, we have been culling between 5,000 and 6,000 badgers in high instance areas.
“If there is a high-risk breakdown in a particular region, badgers are culled and vaccination goes on in parallel,” he said.
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