Doubts about badger cull surface
Advice on the effectiveness and legality of the proposed badger cull pilot programs given to the government by Natural England has been published after a Freedom of Information request by the Labour Party. Specifically, the advice raises the possibility that the culls could result in a legal challenge on grounds of breaching a European-level wildlife treaty, kill tens of thousands of badgers, and accidentally worsen the spread of bovine tuberculosis (bTB).
The advice warns that the government's preferred choice of 'free-shooting', which was chosen on grounds of reduced expense, may not prove sufficient for controlling the badger population and may even backfire as surviving badgers roam further afield than usual to escape - thus spreading bTB to new areas. Natural England's advice also projected that if 40 areas of approximately 350 square kilometres are cleared for culling in the fullness of time, "the cumulative maximum [badger deaths] that might be reached under the policy is about 90,000 to 130,000 in total".
Of more immediate concern is the possibility that such a cull might breach Articles 8 and 9 of the Bern Convention. The animal charity Humane Society International (HSI) has already announced that it will be seeking a judgement on whether the proposed cull breaches the Convention, which charges that governments "shall prohibit... the use of all means capable of causing local disappearance of, or serious disturbance to, populations of a species."
Defra has published guidance for the vet sector ahead of a proposed UK-EU Sanitary and Phytosanitary agreement.
