Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Wildlife group in new badger cull challenge
cine will take place over the next five years and that culling would be phased out.
Natural England and Defra said they were unable to to comment on any potential or ongoing legal cases.
A Defra spokesperson added: “We want to eradicate bovine TB by 2038, and while badger culling currently plays a necessary role in this we are committed to phasing out intensive culling in the coming years.
“Badger control operations are always monitored to check their humaneness, safety and effectiveness.”
Bovine tuberculosis remains one of the greatest animal health threats to the UK, and tens of thousands of cattle are culled annually in England because of it.
Defra publishes a report of the humaneness of the culls each year and they are available on GOV.UK, and says the likelihood of suffering in badgers culled by controlled shooting is comparable with other culling activities such as deer shooting. Wild Justice, led by Chris Packham, Dr Mark Avery and Dr Ruth Tingay, claims that in order to work out whether steps being taken are reasonable, Natural England must have some idea what is meant by “humanely” – but it would appear to have no basis for measuring what that means.
The group has applied for a judicial review of Natural England’s failure to clarify how it sets a benchmark for humaneness and argues that a lack of clarity means that an unacceptably high proportion of badgers could be left to an inhumane death.
In a statement they said: “We’re very grateful to over 1,100 individual donors who have funded our legal challenge. Badgers are wonderful creatures and they need all the friends they can get these days. We believe Gandhi was right to say that you can judge the greatness of a nation by the way it treats its animals, and by that measure this government, Defra and Natural England are doing a very poor job.”
Wild Justice is represented by Leigh Day, which sent Natural England a pre-action protocol letter calling on the Government’s advisers to explain what measure for humaneness it was using.