Natural England has received applications or expressions of interest for Badger cull licences in 8 new counties. A Dorset activist thinks farmers are just getting rid of wild animals that annoys them.
Viv Horne is an activist from Dorset who says “that there are no evidence at all that badgers spread bovine TB, yet the killing continues.” She believes that the cull is a conspiracy to rid farmers of wild animals that annoy them. “I believe that packs of hounds which also carry TB and traps from farm to farm dropping infected faeces, are more likely to be the culprits.”
A spokesman from the National farmer union says that the decision on extending the Badger cull is part of a 25- year- old plan and he welcomes this measures. “This is something that needs to be done to stop the disease from spreading.”
The Badger cull originally started in Somerset in 2013 to prevent the spread of a disease, called Bovine Tuberculosis, to cows. Dorset followed the year after. The extension means that the cull, that today is mostly in the South of England, will spread further north into the country, to Avon, Berkshire, Derbyshire, Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire and Warwickshire.
According to Defra, 19.274 badgers were killed in 2017 compared to almost 11.000 the year before. Meanwhile, more infected cows were killed in 2017 than the year before.
Today the cull is in Cornwall, Herefordshire, Devon, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Dorset. Click on the blue pins on the map below to see how many badgers were killed. The red pins shows the new places where the badger cull will be implemented.
