The Badger Trust has mounted an eleventh hour legal challenge against cull licensing body Natural England. The government body has this week maintained that preparations for badger culls in Gloucestershire and Somerset are underway, despite widespread speculation that complications mean culling may be delayed until next year.

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Controversial plans to kill badgers in two ‘trial areas’ of England form part of Defra’s bovine TB eradication strategy. However, although the government claims that no country has successfully tackled bovine TB without tackling the “wildlife reservoir,” a number of eminent scientists have publicly opposed culling and public opinion is firmly set against the policy. The latest polls reveal 80-90 per cent of the public opposes badger culling.

Although a legal challenge in July and subsequent appeal both ended in failure, on Sunday (21st October) the Badger Trust’s lawyers served Natural England with “an urgent pre-action protocol letter” which calls on the government body to address the Trust’s concerns. The Trust is seeking another judicial review of the cull and has requested Natural England respond to its outstanding questions relating to the policy before it takes action.

The Trust has questioned the decision not to mark cull areas with barriers or warning notices and suggested this constitutes a significant risk to the public. The nature of the cull, which will see markspeople shooting free-roaming animals at night, when badgers are most active, has led senior police officers to express their own misgivings.

The cull will be debated in Parliament on Thursday (25th October), after a government e-petition sponsored by Queen guitarist Brian May received the 150,000 necessary signatures in a matter of days, making it the first such petition to succeed in securing a debate. However, comments made by Defra staff last week gave the impression that the outcome of any parliamentary debate would be academic as government ministers are minded to press ahead with culling.

A Natural England spokesperson told Farming Online that the letter had not impacted on the licensing process. The spokesperson said, “We are considering the contents of the letter and will respond in due course,” that Natural England is “unable to speculate on the potential outcome at the current time,” but that, for now, the department was operating “business as usual.”

On Friday, David Williams, chair of the Badger Trust, questioned whether last week’s revelation that badger numbers in the cull areas are around double the initial estimates made by landowners (and that Defra had spent £850,000 of public money to establish this) would halt or delay culling. Defra and the NFU maintain the cull will proceed as planned although numbers are now estimated to be in the region of 3,600 for Gloucestershire and 4,300 for Somerset.

Williams asked, “Can David Heath, the farming minister, explain how he gave estimates of between 500 and 800 badgers in each of the pilot areas only last Friday on the BBC Today programme?

“This massive discrepancy means that free shooting, if it comes about, will be significantly more difficult. It will also be harder to achieve the necessary minimum of 70 per cent killed as demanded by Defra. If they kill too few, which is now even more likely, they will fail to achieve the benefit they strive for. Alternatively, if they kill too many they risk local extinction and a breach of the Bern Convention.”

On Friday, NFU president Peter Kendall said, “We are working bloody hard to make sure this is deliverable. The latest numbers are making this more challenging but, before this starts, we have got to be very confident that we are going to deliver.”

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