Intensive badger cull marks 10th consecutive year of failed policy

Badger Trust Staff Team
Sep 5, 2022
4 min read

Updated: Mar 1, 2023

Government ploughs ahead with intensive licences and says it reserves the right to keep culling after 2025.

This year marks the tenth consecutive year of the controversial badger cull, the cornerstone of the Government's flawed and wasteful bovine tuberculosis (bTB) control strategy. Vilified, with little evidence, as vectors of bTB (one of the most significant health and economic risks to British cattle farming) badgers have undergone an unprecedented campaign of eradication since 2013 resulting in the needless death of more than 176,000 individuals.

176,928 badgers slaughtered from 2013 to 2021

And yet, amidst the Government's own claims to phase out badger culling from 2025, Defra has included a caveat stating that they retain the right to cull badgers beyond 2025 on the basis of epidemiological evidence.

The badger cull is nowhere near over yet

Speaking of the continued culling beyond 2025, Executive Director of Badger Trust, Peter Hambly, explains:

“The government made great noise around the “fact'' that they were going to end the ineffective culling of badgers in 2025. Now Ministers are saying they will continue if certain conditions apply. This is outrageous – they are obsessed with culling badgers. The answer to solving bTB lies with cattle. It is a cattle-to-cattle problem that needs to be resolved through cattle-focused measures such as improved cattle testing and cattle vaccination, enhanced biosecurity and controlling cattle movements.

Cattle measures are the best way to control bTb

Hambly added:

“The present drought and extreme weather conditions also mean that badger populations in intensively culled zones are under severe strain. Further intensive culling could lead to local extinction events in many areas. The badger cull is an avoidable wildlife catastrophe driven by relentless human interference – 250,000 years of an iconic native mammal brought to an end through flawed government policy.”

Badger Culling Does Not Work

Recent independent research, published in the peer-reviewed journal Vet Record in March 2022, by ecologist Tom Langton and veterinarians Mark Jones and Iain McGill, utilised bTB records published by the government department responsible for overseeing the badger cull, the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). The researchers found no statistical basis in support of badger culling for reducing the rates of bTB in cattle.

Killing 176,000 badgers has not contributed to the decline in cattle bTb

Whilst the study did include the positive news that bTb was being effectively controlled through enhanced biosecurity measures for cattle herds, all results of the study were dismissed by Defra. Instead, Defra continues to cull even when there is already growing evidence of localised badger extinctions in cull zones, and humane caged killing is becoming a thing of the past.

Badger Culling is an Animal Welfare Nightmare

Under cull licences badgers will either be cage trapped and then shot, or ‘controlled shooting’ will be allowed on free running badgers. Since the cull started in 2013, the number of badgers shot whilst free running has increased from around half to a record 87.7% - nearly 9 out of 10 badger victims.

Free shooting is inhumane and in 2015 the British Veterinary Association (BVA) called for free shooting to end due to the significant animal welfare implications. Free shooting leaves injured animals to die slowly of the wounds and subsequent infection. Again, we see that the government has ignored the advice of expert knowledge in a pursuit to continue its unethical campaign against Britain's last remaining large carnivore.

Britain is already one of the most wildlife depleted countries on Earth and cannot afford to lose any more native species. It’s been a decade of death, when will the onslaught stop?

Can the Cull week – a decade of death

This week, Badger Trust is launching a Can the Cull week to shed light on the continuing cull in what is now the tenth consecutive year of intensive cull licences. Each day the Badger Trust website and social media will share the latest facts, figures, and reflections on the badger cull as people across the country show their support for our efforts to end the cull before it’s too late for badgers.

Can the Cull week highlights the ongoing fight against a cruel campaign that achieves nothing more than a smoke screen to the government's failed disease control strategy.

Enough is enough. Badgers deserve better.

How YOU can HELP BADGERS NOW

There are many ways you can help protect badgers and oppose the government's failing, unscientific and cruel badger cull:

Request your Badger Cull Action Pack now and be ready to take action and spread the word

The pack contains:

Take Action leaflet with facts on the cull and how you can take action
Postcard to send to your MP (and one to pass to a friend) to call for an end to the cull
Bookmark to thank you for protecting badgers

Write to your MP about the reality of the badger cull

Need help? Send our dedicated cull postcard, or read our online guide ‘How to Write to your MP’.

Donate to protect badgers

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