Wild Things columnist Eric Brown takes a look at the wonderful world of wildlife including great news for badgers, white storks and red squirrels and also  reveals the unscheduled appearance of a small mammal which shocked aircraft passengers.

The new Government passed 100 days in power under fire for robbing pensioners of winter fuel allowances, grabbing free football tickets, concert tickets, luxury suits and gratis glasses, insulting a potential investor and scrapping our only deterrent to illegal channel boat crossings. By the law of averages, I suppose it had to produce a good idea eventually. I heartily welcome the Labour administration's announcement it will scrap badger culling by 2029, carry out a badger census and develop a vaccine to protect badgers and cattle from TB. As I have written here before I could never understand why legally-protected animals like badgers were being slaughtered on the flimsiest of evidence that they passed TB to cattle.

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A fascinating TV programme featuring campaigner Brian May of the pop group Queen exposed doubts about official methods of TB testing for cattle and the Government announced badger killing will be replaced by injections. Some 230,000 badgers have been killed since the cull, which costs taxpayers an estimated £100 million per year, began in 2013. We can only wait to see whether the Government keeps its promise against a backdrop of protest from farmers.

There's good news from the bird world, too. White storks could soon be living in London. A feasibility study is underway to determine whether these huge birds could once again breed in the capital. Citizen Zoo will investigate which measures are needed to make London more welcoming for the species which thrived after being reintroduced at the Knepp Estate in West Sussex. Meanwhile an increase in the goshawk population could help red squirrels survive. Native reds are down from 3.5million to about 120,000 thanks mainly to the introduced grey squirrel which outcompetes it for food and passes on a virus deadly to reds. By contrast, squirrel-eating goshawks recovered spectacularly after going extinct here by the end of the 19th century and it is hoped they will control grey squirrel numbers naturally rather than resorting to outlandish schemes like feeding them birth control pills. I hope they can differentiate between red and grey.

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I've always found identifying redpolls difficult as lesser, common and arctic look alike to me. Now comes confirmation that I was right all along. Advances in DNA technology have allowed the birding boffins to declare that all three are in fact the same species and will henceforth be known as redpoll. This won't please the birding number-crunchers set to lose a couple a ticks from their precious life lists.

And finally... an Oslo to Malaga flight landed in Copenhagen with a stowaway aboard - a mouse. The rodent jumped from a passengers' in-flight meal when she opened it. Dangermouse, perhaps? "Doors to manual!"