Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman announced today that she will invite farmers to submit a short list of areas suitable for a pilot badger cull.

Speaking in the House of Commons this morning Spelman said that "Defra will than select two areas from this list and these two areas will then be invited to apply for a culling license.

Natural England will assess the applications against the license criteria and decide whether or not to grant a license. Following conclusion of the six week pilots from what we observe and what we learn and taking into account the evaluation by the independent panel we will than take a decision on whether to roll out the policy more widely."