Badger population at risk as Government orders cull of more than 50,000, campaigners say

The Government has reportedly decided to expand the cull that has taken place over the past three years

Ian Johnston 

Monday 29 February 2016

More than 50,000 badgers are to be culled in a dramatic expansion of Government’s efforts to protect cattle against tuberculosis, according to a report.

Over the past three years, just under 4,000 badgers have been killed in Somerset, Gloucestershire and Dorset at a cost of more than £5m.

But The Times reported that the Government had now decided to expand the cull by killing more than 12 times that number at sites across the country, starting this autumn.

Animal rights activists have protested that culling is ineffective in controlling TB and complained that badgers are being killed indiscriminately, whether they have the disease or not.

And Dominic Dyer, chief executive of the Badger Trust, warned that a significant proportion of England’s badger population was at risk.

“Hundreds of thousands of badgers could be killed over the next five years and that would worry us greatly because we believe the population as a whole is probably less than half a million,” he said.

“There is no evidence that the badger culls since 2013 have reduced the level of bovine TB in cattle.

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