A decision on whether or not to extend badger culling in Gloucestershire by eight weeks, expected from Natural England on Monday, has yet to be made public, further fuelling speculation about the fate of Defra's pilot culls. The pilot culls were set up to inform Defra's bovine TB eradication strategy.

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At the time of writing, no decision has come from the cull licensing body, though the Gloucestershire cull company submitted its application on Thursday, when it was revealed that culling in the zone had fallen way short of targets. Responding to questions on Tuesday afternoon, Natural England posted on its twitter feed that "We're considering the [Gloucestershire] licence extension application. When a decision is taken we'll make it public."

On Saturday, the Badger Trust informed Natural England of its intention to mount a legal challenge against the requested extension and earlier last week, two separate Yougov polls revealed that the majority of the public already believes the pilot culls have failed, and two thirds would like to see culling abandoned.    

Meanwhile, research from the University of Exeter and the government's National Wildlife Management Centre has suggested that the best course of action to deal with badgers infected with tuberculosis may be to leave them alone.

In the Defra-funded study, published on Monday, Researchers fitted over 50 wild badgers with collars that tracked their social contacts. They found that badgers with TB were socially isolated from their own groups, limiting the spread of the disease, within these groups but that they could spread the disease to others. The researchers went further to conclude that "the distinctive social position of infected badgers may help explain how social stability mitigates, and social perturbation increases, the spread of infection in badgers," meaning that disturbing badgers may lead to the increased spread of disease.  

Commenting on the study, Professor Robbie McDonald from the University of Exeter's Environment and Sustainability Institute, said, "Infected animals were likely to be less important for spread within groups while at the same time being more important for spread between groups. Culling badgers perturbs social structures and we think our findings may help understanding of so-called 'perturbation', where culling has been linked to increases in TB in badgers."

Based on the findings, Professor McDonald recommended that, although "Curbing TB infection in wildlife remains a challenge… Vaccination has the potential to disrupt disease flow, without perturbing social network structures."

A Defra spokesperson repeated, "We have to use every tool in the box because TB is so difficult to eradicate and is spreading. We won't get on top of this terrible disease until we start dealing with the infection in badgers as well as in cattle."

Paterson feels the heat

In light of the failures, and growing controversy over the government's badger culling policy, animal welfare campaigners have increased scrutiny on environment secretary Owen Paterson. The environment secretary has been accused of making unsubstantiated statements relating to badger culling in Somerset and faced calls to step down from his position.

Humane Society International director Mark Jones said on Tuesday that Mr Paterson's assertions in a parliamentary answer to Angela Smith MP, that "…some of the animals we have shot have been desperately sick—in the final stages of disease…" are groundless. Jones said, "As a vet I find Mr Paterson's claim that badgers shot in the pilot culls were 'desperately sick' highly suspicious. I know of no evidence to back this up, indeed all the available data suggests that even where bovine TB is rife among cattle, only a tiny proportion of badgers will be suffering any symptoms of the disease."

He added, "As Mr Paterson has refused to have the badger carcases tested for TB, he cannot possibly have any scientifically credible data to support his assertion. As usual, the Secretary of State is fond of making wild assertions without providing a shred of evidence to support them but in doing so his own credibility is crumbling day by day."

Also on Tuesday, Brian May, former Queen Guitarist and spokesperson for anti-cull group Team Badger, called for the environment secretary's resignation over his handling of the cull. Dr May accused Mr Paterson of attempting "to massage a failure into a success" by only notifying the public of a last minute recount of badgers when he was delivering the results from the first (Somerset) trial.

May added that the Defra secretary has not managed the cull with the "honesty and transparency" demanded of his position.  After the results of culling in Somerset were published earlier in the month, Huddersfield MP Barry Sheerman also called on Mr Paterson to resign.

The companies administering both trial culls failed to reach their targets over six weeks of culling, leading animal welfare groups and wildlife scientists to call for the pilots to be abandoned. Mr Paterson has instead backed Natural England's decision to extend culling in the Somerset zone by three weeks and confirmed that Defra is investigating gassing (outlawed in 1982) as a means to kill badgers.