The Badger Cull

The Wildlife Trusts have opposed the badger cull since it first started and no Wildlife Trust will allow badger culling on its land.

What is Bovine Tuberculosis?

Bovine tuberculosis (bTB) is a highly infectious disease of cattle which devastates thousands of farming businesses annually. Since the mid-1980s, the incidence of bTB in cattle has increased substantially creating an economic burden on the taxpayer and the farming industry, as infected cattle must be culled.

Government research shows that TB is not a major cause of death in badgers. Generally, infected badgers do not show any sign of infection and can survive for many years before suffering from severe emaciation.

What do The Wildlife Trusts believe?

We are very conscious of the hardship that bovine TB (bTB) causes in the farming community and the need to find the right mechanisms to control the disease. However, we believe that a badger cull is not the answer. The scientific evidence demonstrates that culling is likely to be ineffective in fighting the disease and, worse still, risks making the problem even worse. We believe the emphasis of all our efforts should be to find a long-term solution and we are calling for the Government to end its policy of culling badgers.

This is a cattle problem, not a badger problem. 

The control of Bovine TB in cattle should be the main focus of everyone’s efforts to control this problem. The evidence shows that badgers are not the primary cause of the spread of TB in cattle: the primary route of infection is via cow-to-cow contact.

The cull is scientifically unsound. 

The Minister of State for Agriculture, Fisheries & Food announced in December 2018 that the badger cull has been “effective” in terms of the numbers of badgers culled over the specified area of land. Robust evidence is still lacking to demonstrate that badger culling is worth the loss of thousands of badgers and millions of pounds of public spending. 

What are The Wildlife Trusts doing?

The Wildlife Trusts have been working on the issue of bTB and its links to badgers for several years. During this time our activities have included:

• Undertaking badger vaccination programmes since 2011* on our nature reserves and in the wider countryside in partnership with vets, farmers, and landowners.
• Standing up for badgers in local and national media
• Petitioning the Prime Minister to drop the Government’s failed badger cull policy and develop an alternative strategy to tackle bTB
• Lobbying the government to develop a cattle vaccine and implement an all-encompassing badger vaccine strategy
• Collating, summarising and presenting the science on the spread of bTB
• Encouraging our members and supporters to write to their MPs to press for a different approach to eradicating Btb, without culling badgers.
• Working with Defra on a Badger Edge Vaccination Scheme
• Supporting and promoting e-petitions to stop the cull