Investigative reporters have found that farmers in the South-West have been conducting illegal badger gassing 'trials' after losing faith in the government's official pilot culls.  

image expired

Isabel Webster of Sky News, in an investigation aired last week, discovered that farmers had formed into bands to carry out illegal gassing 'trials' in the wake of the initial pilot culls' postponement in October 2012. The pilot culls were pulled at the eleventh hour last October due to massive discrepancies between the number of badgers reported by the cull companies and the findings of a subsequent Defra recount.

Last week, widely differing population estimates became a source of embarrassment once more for Defra, when Environment Secretary Owen Paterson revealed that markspeople in the Somerset cull zone had failed to kill their targets of 70 percent of the newly lowered badger numbers.  

Over the course of her investigation, Webster uncovered evidence of unofficial culling trials wherein farmers used vehicle engines and hosepipes to kill badgers, a protected species under the Bern convention, on 14 farms in south-west England. According to Dominic Dyer of charity Care for the Wild, farmers have been using social networking sites to share tips on best practice.

There have been concerns that the two dramatically different badger population estimates delivered between Autumn 2012 and this year could be the result of wildlife persecution. Although Owen Paterson, with the backing of Defra officials, has said that the estimated population drop of one thousand badgers over the course of a year in Somerset is down to environmental factors (cold winter, lack of food, lower fecundity), he has not backed up his statements. A Natural England report on the drop has yet to be published.

The use of gas to kill wildlife was banned in 1982, over concerns that gassing is an inhumane and inefficient means of dispatching animals.  DEFRA's 2005 review of lethal methods for badger control examined various gasses and means of delivery and dismissed the vast majority as unacceptably inhumane. Illegal gassing is a serious criminal offence, which carries penalties of a prison term and fines of up to £5,000 for each badger killed, but experts have said there is clear evidence that Britain's wildlife protection laws are proving woefully inadequate.

Commentators have warned that the environment secretary's refusal to condemn illegal gassing outright, combined with his admission on Thursday that the government is investigating the possibility of gassing badgers in official trials, in light of shooters' poor performance in the Somerset trial cull, is sending the message that farmers can kill a protected species "with impunity."  Paterson did acknowledge last week that illegal gassing, through its inefficiency, is highly likely to increase the risk of TB-carrying badgers escaping and moving between setts, spreading disease which the perpetrators are allegedly attempting to curtail.

Wendy Higgins, Communications Director for HSI UK also said last week, "Even with carbon monoxide there is a significant risk of suffering. Badger setts are very complex in structure, making it extremely difficult to achieve lethal gas concentrations sufficient to kill all the animals inside, or indeed kill them quickly. Many badgers could die a long, lingering and extremely unpleasant death and any cubs could be orphaned and left to starve because typically they are less susceptible to the gas."

commenting on the Defra secretary's acknowledgement that his department is conducting a 'desk-based study' into the possibility of gassing badgers, she added, "Death by gassing can cause considerable animal suffering and if DEFRA resorts to this it will be a shocking new moral low in the Government's disastrous badger cull policy. Instead of looking for more ways to kill badgers, DEFRA must surely acknowledge what is now beyond doubt - the badger cull is unscientific, unjustified, unethical and unnecessary."

Senior police officers warned during the government consultation on badger culling that the policy could usher in a wave of wildlife persecution and, in response to Gloucestershire and Somerset's cull companies' request to extend culling (which was granted on Friday by Natural England), Gloucestershire's police and crime Commissioner Martin Surl registered his opposition. Serl said he was concerned that policing costs would become unmanageable and that cull companies "may become more desperate in their attempts to shoot their quota of badgers."