End of the badger cull
... after Carrie’s campaign to scrap it
THE controversial culling of badgers is being phased out and replaced by vaccines in a victory for the Prime Minister’s fiancee Carrie Symonds
Campaigners claim 100,000 badgers have been shot dead since the cull – designed to halt the spread of tuberculosis to cattle – began in 2013.
The Government yesterday announced the mass killing will ‘gradually’ be phased out over the coming decade and replaced by TB vaccinations for cattle. Badgers will also be caught and inoculated against the disease.
Boris Johnson’s pregnant partner Miss Symonds, 31, has campaigned strongly against the cull. She is a friend of Dominic Dyer, head of the anti- cull Badger Trust, and has been named in court papers lodged by farmers claiming they were improperly denied a culling licence in Derbyshire last year because of her influence.
Ministers say the culling strategy has seen TB in herds fall by 66 per cent in Gloucestershire and 37 per cent in Somerset. But campaigners have disputed the claims.
The animals are officially a protected species in the UK to deter illegal badger-baiting. It is estimated there are up to 500,000 around the country. Yesterday Environment Secretary George Eustice said: ‘The badger is an iconic, protected species and no one wants to be culling badgers for ever.’ The cull will ‘gradually’ be phased out by the mid to late 2020s in favour of measures including a cattle vaccine being trialled for the first time, more badgers being trapped and vaccinated and better testing for the disease.
The announcement follows months of debate about Miss Symonds’ influence over Government policy on the cull after the Derbyshire licence was refused last year following ‘direct intervention’ by the Prime Minister.
Although the cull is being phased out, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said it will still have the right to bring in new cull zones where evidence shows badgers are keeping the disease going.
Mr Eustice said: ‘The badger cull has led to a significant reduction in the disease as demonstrated by recent academic research and past studies. But no one wants to continue the cull of this protected species indefinitely so, once the weight of disease in wildlife has been addressed, we will accelerate other elements of our strategy, including improved diagnostics and cattle vaccination.’ Miss Symonds was silent on the end to the cull yesterday. But Mr Dyer, who met her with Mr Johnson in Downing Street last August, said: ‘As a patron of the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation, which opposes the badger cull policy, I’m sure Carrie Symonds will be pleased with today’s Government announcement. It’s good to see Carrie remain a strong voice for the environment and animal welfare within Downing Street.’
He said ministers had spent ‘an estimated £60million of public money killing over 100,000 badgers in the largest destruction of a protected species in living memory’.
Professor Rosie Woodroffe, of the Zoological Society of London, backed the ‘sensible transition from culling to vaccination’.
She said vaccinations have ‘the potential to eradicate TB from badgers, as well as being cheaper, more humane and more environmentally friendly’. More than 30,000 cattle a year are slaughtered due to bovine TB, which costs £150million a year.
The cull has been condemned by celebrities including BBC Springwatch host Chris Packham, Queen guitarist Brian May and actress Dame Judi Dench.