Having been denied a verbal appeal following the High Court review of the government’s plans to kill badgers as part of its bovine TB eradication strategy, the Badger Trust yesterday lodged a written appeal to the court.

The Badger Trust had challenged the government’s decision to sanction trial culls in Somerset and Gloucestershire, set to go ahead after the Olympics. The Trust launched legal proceedings on the grounds that the cull has been improperly costed, will not be effective and that Natural England is an inappropriate licensing body. However, the court rejected all three claims last week.

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Nevertheless, the Trust yesterday announced it would appeal on the same grounds. Although Defra ministers said they had expected a legal challenge from the outset, it is thought the Trust’s appeal may delay cull proceedings.

In a statement made yesterday, a Trust spokesperson said the decision to appeal “Underlines the Trust’s strong belief that the Government’s proposals to kill badgers in England are likely to do more harm than good.” When the Trust’s challenge was rejected last week, a spokesperson said the ruling had no bearing on the science of culling, only its legality.

Although some organisations, including the NFU and British Veterinary Association, welcomed last Thursday’s ruling, Rosie Woodroffe, an expert from the Institute of Zoology who worked on the Randomised Badger Culling Trial conducted under the previous government commented, “Farmers will still lose out even if culling is lawful.”

Although Defra officials claim that bTB has never been successfully tackled without first dealing with the wildlife reservoir, cull opponents dispute this and point out that a range of wild and domestic animals are susceptible to the disease and that a severe outbreak after the Second World War was contained without recourse to culling. A spokesperson for the Trust said yesterday, “Culling badgers in the hopes of reducing incidence by 12-16 per cent after nine years is a costly distraction from 84 per cent of the problem. The death toll could be at least 40,000 badgers and possibly as many as 130,000 according to Natural England.”

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