Badger Cull Pilot Areas revealed
Agriculture Minister Jim Paice has announced that farmers and landowners in West Somerset and West Gloucestershire will be able to apply for licences to undertake the controlled shooting of badgers on their land. The areas were selected from a shortlist submitted by the National Farmer's Union (NFU) and the National Beef Association (NBA).
Groups from these areas, which won Ministers' approval because they had boundaries to limit the negative effects of the culls and sound support amongst local farmers, can now apply to Natural England for four-year badger control licences. The culls will begin at some time in autumn 2012, and will be independently monitored to determine the efficacy and humaneness of controlled shooting. If they are demonstrated to be successful, up to a further ten cull areas could be approved annually from 2013.
Commenting, Mr Paice said “Bovine TB is a chronic and devastating disease. It causes the slaughter of tens of thousands of cattle each year, and is taking a terrible toll on our farmers and rural communities. Nobody wants to cull badgers. But no country in the world where wildlife carries TB has eradicated the disease in cattle without tackling it in wildlife too.”
“These two pilots are just part of a wide range of activity on bovine TB. We already have robust measures to control its spread amongst cattle, which we plan to strengthen further, and are continuing to work hard on the development of practical and usable vaccines.”
Natural England will be giving the local public the “opportunity to comment” on the proposed areas. However, the farming industry is advising that details of the exact locations of the culls should be kept confidential and as general as possible to reduce the security risk from animal rights activists to the farmers involved.
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