Why are badgers protected?

Following on from some of the stuff on Twitter recently, I thought I'd ask the simple question; Why are badgers protected? You see, to a simple countryman like me, I can understand why some species need to be protected; they may be rare, as in the case of some birds of prey, or they may be harmless, like some songbirds. The trouble is, neither of these apply to badgers. The fact is; in the Southwest of England, there are just too many badgers for the good of them, and the environment they live in. Just take hedgehogs for an example. Old Brock like hedgehogs. They make a nice little badger snack. In West Cornwall, during the RBCT (Randomised Badger Culling Trials), the University of Warwick did a survey of the proactive cull area before culling started. What did they find? Lots of badgers and few, if any, hedgehogs. The badgers had pretty much wiped them out. Post cull, another survey was done, and found that where the badger population had been reduced, hedgehog numbers had started to recover. That is what is known as Wildlife Management. When one species becomes so numerous that it starts to impact on other, rarer species, we step in and try and redress the balance with an overall positive effect on the environment as a whole. It's not just hedgehogs that are suffering under the strain of an ever increasing population of badgers either; bumblebees, ground nesting birds, newts, amphibians etc. They are all, gradually losing the fight to survive against such a huge, and overprotected badger population. So I ask again, why are badgers protected? Think about it. Foxes aren't protected, nor are deer. Both large mammal species, both rarer than badgers, both thriving and healthy. If the protected status of badgers was removed in those counties where they are endemic, what would the result be? The result would be landowners choosing for themselves whether to cull badgers or not. The badgers left would be more healthy, with less competition for food, hedgehogs and those other species that are being hoovered up at present would start to recover, and we wouldn't need any state organised cull. Those landowners who chose not to cull could sit happily watching their badgers multiply (and other species decrease)and everyone would be happy. Except the protectionist lunatics who want to protect badgers at the expense of everything else. They'll never be happy without a 'cause'. Coming soon: My bTB control strategy