New badger cull zones revealed
BADGER culls are to go ahead in 11 new areas of the country from this autumn, alongside 29 existing cull zones.
Expansion of the cull, aimed at preventing transmission of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) disease to livestock, was met with anger by wildlife campaigners, who said it would mean tens of thousands more badgers being killed from Cornwall to Cumbria.
Natural England gave the goahead
yesterday for the culling of up to 62,899 badgers in a total of 40 cull zones. The culls began in 2012, in a bid to halt the spread of bTB, which has resulted in tens of thousands of cattle being destroyed.
The new zones include two in Devon, one in Cornwall and one in Dorset. The others are in Avon, Cheshire, Staffordshire, Herefordshire and Wiltshire. In the 11 new zones, at least 18,757 badgers must be killed, up to a maximum of 25,428.
In the four counties of the far South West – Devon, Cornwall, Dorset and Somerset – up to 35,000 animals will be killed in 24 zones. Natural England does not reveal precisely where each zone covers.
Farming Minister George Eustice said: “Bovine TB remains the greatest animal health threat to the UK, costing taxpayers over £100 million 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.
“Our strategy in combatting the disease now has an opportunity to look at different methods as part of our response to the Godfray Review. We will fully respond to this review in the near future.”
David George from the South West NFU said: “The cull is part of the government’s 25-year TB eradication policy so we are pleased to see the number of cull zones extended.
“Of course no one wants to kill badgers, but it will be impossible to get on top of this disease without tackling it in wildlife and cattle.
“The cull is just one part of the strategy, there is also a stringent testing and culling regime for catfallen. tle – that sees 33,000 cattle killed every year – movement restrictions, moves to increase biosecurity on farms and the use of vaccination where it is appropriate.”
Dominic Dyer, chief executive of The Badger Trust, said the government had caved in to political pressure by not creating new cull zones in Oxfordshire, Hampshire and Derbyshire, where there has been significant public pressure.
Instead, they had “massively extended” the cull in existing areas. The new maximum of 62,000 is significantly greater than the 50,000 which had been widely expected.
He criticised the government for signing off on “the largest destruction of protected species in living memory”.
Research from the University of Exeter has shown that the rate of bTB in cattle in some cull areas has But that is contradicted by evidence of a 130% increase in Gloucestershire.
Mr Dyer said: “It is going down in some areas, but not massively. That could be due to cattle biosecurity measures.”
By the end of this year, about 130,000 badgers will have been culled since 2013, at a cost of about £60 million, Mr Dyer said.
Ellie Brodie, senior policy manager at The Wildlife Trusts, said: “Evidence shows that badgers are not the primary cause of the spread of TB in cattle and that the primary route of infection is from cow-to-cow contact – so a vaccine for cattle should be a government priority.”
She said Wildlife Trusts had been and would continue to vaccinate badgers on their reserves and in partnership with vets, farmers and landowners.