European badger (Meles meles) responses to low-intensity, selective culling: using mark recapture and relatedness data to assess social perturbation

Culling the main wildlife host of bovine tuberculosis in Great Britain (GB) and Ireland, the European badger (Meles meles) to reduce infections in cattle, has been employed in both territories. In GB, this has been controversial, with results suggesting that culling induces disturbance to badger social structure, facilitating wider disease dissemination. Previous analyses hypothesized that even very low-level, selective culling may cause similar deleterious effects by increasing ranging of individuals and greater mixing between social-groups. To assess this hypothesis, a novel, prospective, landscape-scale ‘before-and-after’ Test and vaccinate or remove (TVR) study was implemented. Test-positive badgers were culled and test-negative badgers were BCG vaccinated and released. Mark-recapture metrics of badger ranging and genetic metrics of social group relatedness did not change significantly over the study period. However, selective culling was associated with a localised reduction in soc...