Paul Wilkinson, head of Living Landscape for The Wildlife Trusts, said:

“We’re exasperated by today’s announcements and condemn any intention to roll out the badger culls, which have been found to be repeatedly flawed in their methodology, measures and objectives.  They are a resounding policy failure which should be halted immediately.” 

Culling badgers is likely to increase the bovine tuberculosis risk to cattle due to the perturbation effect, where disruption of otherwise stable badger social groups causes individuals to range beyond their usual territory and come into contact with neighbouring animals, increasing the risk of disease transmission.

According to The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) the badger culls in Somerset, Gloucestershire and Dorset were all ‘successful in meeting their targets’ in 2015, with more than 1,400 badgers culled. However, these targets have been widely criticised by leading scientists as arbitrary and deliberately set to be achievably low. Scientific evidence clearly demonstrates that culling badgers will not make any meaningful contribution to the eradication of bovine TB in cattle and the pilot culls in England have proven ineffective and inhumane.

Paul Wilkinson comments: “The badger culls may have met the minimum targets set by the government but this cannot be considered a true measure of success. There is no evidence that culling badgers is having an impact on bTB in cattle. There are no statistics available for bTB incidence within the cull zones and no baseline data to compare them to, even if stats were forthcoming. The first two years of the pilot culls have already cost the taxpayer more than £16.8 million and there is no clear evidence to prove they have been an effective use of taxpayer’s money.

“The Government’s own cost-benefit analysis, which relies heavily on the results of the Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT), indicates that the cost of each new cull zone could exceed the expected benefits by at least £1.49 million. The way that the pilot culls have been carried out to date is already significantly different to the methods used by the RBCT, and the newly relaxed licence conditions will ensure that any future culls bear little to no resemblance – meaning that they cannot be expected to deliver the same (minimal) benefits and are more likely to increase disease risk to cattle. This is bad for farmers, bad for wildlife and bad for the taxpayer.”