Badger charity mounts legal challenge against culling

The Badger Trust has mounted a legal challenge against the granting of new culling licences.

The charity argues Natural England ignored the advice of its own scientific experts in allowing the measure to go ahead in areas including Dorset, Wiltshire and Oxfordshire.

The cull is aimed at reducing the spread of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) but there is a growing call to support further evaluations of community-led badger vaccination.

Natural England said it could not comment on legal action.

The badger culling programme began 11 years ago. By next year it is likely to have cost the lives of 250,000 of the animals, costing the UK taxpayer more than £100m.

It remains a controversial weapon in the important battle to keep cows free of a disease that puts them and humans at risk.

This year licences have been renewed for four sites - two in Dorset and two in Wiltshire.

Two new areas have also been approved in Oxfordshire and Wiltshire.

Across all six sites a total of between 801 and 6,674 badgers can be culled.

The Sussex-based Badger Trust is taking legal action of the way Natural England reached its decision on the licences.

It believes vaccination of badgers should be used instead.

Peter Hambly, executive director of the Badger's Trust, said Natural England's own head of science had asserted this supplementary cull should not go ahead.

"Natural England and Defra stated that they are going ahead because they don't want to upset the farming lobby," he said.

"Thirty thousand badgers have been targeted for slaughter over the country, including thousands in places like Oxfordshire and Dorset."

In coming to its decision on licences, Natural England did outline to the government that there is "sound evidence" that badger vaccination can be used as an alternative to culling, and that it is still committed to ending the cull as its main control measure by 2026.

But Natural England said it was not yet ready to be rolled out everywhere, partly because of a lack of trained personnel.

The fear is leaving a gap as a switch is made between one main measure of control to another.

The BBC has spoken to several farmers who did not want to be formally interviewed but said they all felt it was "too soon" to end culling.

The National Farmers' Union (NFU) president Tom Bradshaw said: "The current government strategy to control and eradicate bTB, which gives farmers access to multiple measures to tackle the disease, has been hugely successful."

"New data in the Birch Review provided further evidence of this, demonstrating the herd incidence rate of TB reduced by 56% in areas that have had four or more years of wildlife control," he added.

“The NFU will continue to work with its members and government to ensure a successful strategy to eradicate bTB continues to be based on sound science and evidence.”

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