The badger cull of 2019

An article by Rosie Woodroffe.

For a locked-down nation in desperate need of good news, the latest information on England’s badger cull brings little respite.

Bovine tuberculosis (TB) is a major problem for farming and, while most cattle herds are infected by other cattle, a small proportion are infected by badgers. The government’s response has been a mass slaughter of badgers, pursued by farming groups with a scale and energy that would make you think badgers were invading aliens, rather than a legally protected native species with an important role in Britain’s depauperate ecosystems.