Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust writes about the UK government’s stance on Badger culls as a preventative measures against Bovine Tuberculosis

Only four years ago, The Wildlife Trusts welcomed the government’s commitment to prioritising vaccinating badgers over culling them, in the fight to control the spread of Bovine Tuberculosis — a disease that has a significant impact on the dairy and beef industries and the farmers working within them, writes Erin McDaid, Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust.

We, perhaps naively, took the statement at face value and saw it as something of a vindication of the vaccination approach that we had been developing since 2011 nationally and since 2015 here in Nottinghamshire.

As ever, the devil was in the detail and while the government announcement focused on the long-term commitment to end culling, a deeper dive behind the headlines raised concerns that the cull would be ramped up and expanded in many areas.

As the weeks and months passed by, it became all too apparent that there were plans afoot to expand the cull into the area where we’d spent years developing our badger vaccination programme with government funding.

Even the prospect of an expanded cull served to seriously undermine our science-based vaccination programme — with farmers previously supportive feeling pressure from peers.

The decision to expand the cull back in 2021 came as a real blow. With four year licences issued in 2021 and 2022 while the government’s stated long term aim was to bring the cull to an end; this should have meant culling would stop in 2026.

Even with the prospect of the end of the cull in sight we feared that the new licences would put a further 130,000 badgers at risk — potentially resulting in 300,000 badgers out of a population of 485,000, or approximately 60% of the estimated population being culled by 2026.

I remember saying to a colleague at the time, in frustration, that it seemed that the government was planning to end the cull once they’d killed all the badgers and this week, I read a quote in the Guardian from ecological consultant Tom Langton which read “Sunak now wants all the badgers dead.”

Mr Langton’s comments refer to his view that a new consultation on the badger cull included “chilling plans to kill 100% of badgers in Bovine Tuberculosis affected areas.”

A key element of the new approach the government is consulting on is that culling would be kept open as a method of control, but with no stated end date meaning badgers could go on being killed indefinitely.

In the ministerial foreword for the consultation Steve Barclay MP, secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs, said: “Under proposals we will move away from culls of fixed duration.

“Culling would continue in areas for as long as is necessary… Badger vaccination would then take place to maintain disease control benefits.”

One way of interpreting this would be — kill now, vaccinate later — which in my view is both unsustainable and unacceptable.

Given that the UK is home to 25% of the European population The Wildlife Trusts believe that the UK has an international responsibility to conserve them.

In the note for applicants seeking to be granted a licence to cull badgers there is a section describing what constitutes an ‘effective’ cull.

The guidance states that any cull should seek to reduce the badger population to a level where it would “ideally substantially reduce or even eliminate the risk of infection of cattle from badgers.”

Given the government’s track record on extending and expanding I worry that this could be interpreted that to eliminate the risk of infection via badgers, all badger must be eliminated.

Time and again the government has failed to listen to the public’s concerns on this emotive issue, but I would urge as many people as possible to have their say on Bovine Tuberculosis: future badger control policy and cattle measure proposals at: www.gov.uk/government/consultations/ before April 22nd.

Once on the main consultation page – search for Badger.