Badger Cull licensing body Natural England has announced that it will revoke an extension period granted to the Gloucestershire cull company five weeks ago, as markspeople in the cull zone have failed to meet their targets.

image expired

Natural England granted the widely contested extension in late October, after shooters aiming to kill 70 percent of badgers in the zone killed just 30 percent of the estimated population after an initial six week period. The extension also reduced the kill target from the 70 percent government advisors had said would be necessary to see disease benefits to 58 percent.

The announcement was made on Friday, just two days after the High Court rejected a legal challenge submitted by wildlife charity Save Me. Culling will officially end on Saturday.

From Sunday, under the terms of Natural England's extension, markspeople would have been forced to abandon caged-shooting and revert to the previously untested 'free-shooting' methodology that trial culls in Gloucestershire and Somerset were set up to test. Cull companies in both zones began using the more expensive caged shooting during the initial six week period, reportedly in response to a low success rate from shooting free-running animals. Even so, both culls failed to meet their targets, despite the granting of a three week extension to the Somerset company and eight weeks to Gloucestershire.  

Defra officials have stated that they intend to roll out badger culling, which forms a part of the government's bovine TB eradication strategy, but the two trial culls were only intended to test out the free-shooting method. The effect of culling on bovine TB incidences will not be recorded in either badgers or cattle in the two cull zones.

After the initial cull period ended in the two zones, and the pilots' shortcomings were revealed in Parliament, Owen Paterson admitted that the government has conducted desk-based research into gassing as a means of dispatching badgers. Illegal persecution, including gassing, is believed to be one of the principal reasons behind drastic re-evaluations of badger numbers in the two cull zones. Badger population estimates in the two zones were slashed by around 1,000 individuals between 2012 and this year, though populations being monitored elsewhere remained relatively stable.

Natural England said on Friday that its decision had "been taken based on the decreasing number of badgers seen by contractors over recent weeks which makes achieving a further significant reduction in the coming weeks unlikely." The licensing body added that the move will not affect the four year cull license granted in September 2012, meaning culling could resume next year.

Four years is the length of time that architects of the previous government's Randomised Badger Culling Trials said would be necessary to achieve a 16 percent reduction in bovine TB incidence. The RBCT's authors went on to conclude that, on balance, culling could make "no meaningful contribution" to TB control.

The RBCT also highlighted the importance of a short culling period, because of the danger of perturbation (whereby sick animals are disturbed and spread infection further afield than they otherwise would). This has been supported by recent research findings from a Defra-funded study.

Natural England said that a Defra official will provide Parliament with an update on Monday, including the final number of badgers killed in Gloucestershire.

Commenting on the revelation, Mark Jones, Gloucestershire vet and Executive Director of Humane Society International in the UK, said, "I am much relieved that at long last some common sense is being applied and the Government's badger cull fiasco will finally be over, for the time being at least.

"In the face of what has been the dismal failure of this policy, we commend Natural England for making the sensible decision to revoke the cull licence. They should have acted sooner and it is deeply regrettable that hundreds of badgers in Gloucestershire and Somerset have already paid for this ill-conceived policy with their lives. HSI UK hopes that DEFRA will now do the decent thing and admit that killing badgers to control TB in cattle is a ludicrous and inhumane idea. As the killing stops, we urge DEFRA to abandon its plans to roll out this calamitous cull elsewhere in the country."