Expanded badger cull will ‘push species to verge of local extinction’, experts warn

Badger culling in England has been extended to 11 sprawling new areas, the government has confirmed – and is likely to result in the killing of an estimated 63,000 animals this autumn.

The systematic execution is designed to halt the spread of bovine TB which costs taxpayers more than £100m a year in compensation pay outs to impacted farmers.

But the sheer scale of this year’s cull – which will see 50 per cent more badgers killed than last autumn – has shocked conservationists and scientists alike.

Dominic Dyer, chief executive of the Badger Trust, said it would end up “pushing the species to the verge of local extinction in areas of England which it has inhabited since the ice age”.

He called it “an unforgivable act of ecological vandalism and a national disgrace”.

Rosie Woodroffe, a professor in ecology at the Zoological Society of London, described the slaughter as “unimaginable”.

The extended cull was rubber-stamped by farming minister George Eustice on Wednesday.

It will mean the killings – which were first enacted in 2013 – now stretch across 40 regions from Cornwall to Cumbria and takes in new areas of Avon, Cheshire, Staffordshire, Devon, Dorset, Herefordshire and Wiltshire.

Mr Eustice said: “Bovine TB remains the greatest animal health threat to the UK, costing taxpayers over £100m every year as well as causing devastation and distress for hard-working farmers and rural communities.

“There is no single measure that will provide an answer to beating this disease. That is why we have always been committed to a multi-pronged approach including proactive badger control, as well as other tools such as tighter cattle controls, improved biosecurity and badger vaccination.”

He added that a single application to cull in Derbyshire had been refused because a vaccination scheme was already under way.

But critics of the wider policy have pointed out that TB in cattle soared by 130 per cent in key cull areas last year suggesting its impact was limited.

A 2018 independent review of strategies for tackling the disease, meanwhile, warned against an “over-emphasis” on the role of wildlife in its spread and concluded badgers were not the primary cause of the problem.

Sir Charles Godfray, who led the government-appointed review, said transmission was greater from cattle to cattle and suggested farmers needed to do more to prevent the spread. It also found culling had only a modest effect in curbing TB.

The government has never responded to the review.

Speaking about the new expansion, Arthur Thomas, campaigns manager at the International Fund for Animal Welfare, told The Guardian: “The expansion to the badger cull is not only a tragedy for British wildlife, but also for our farmers. The government’s decision flies in the face of scientific evidence.”

Ranald Munro, chairman of a now-disbanded expert panel appointed to assess the first culls, has previously said up to 9,000 badgers would have suffered “immense pain” as a result of the slaughter.