On Wednesday the Government announced a new consultation on its plans. This has caused confusion as some people now believe there will be a ban on culling from 2022. In actual fact they are just recommending that no new cull licences are issued after 2022. This means countless licences can be approved between now and then, each taking four years to complete. It also means new cull locations can be added and the cull will not end until at least 2026 at the earliest.

Jo Smith, CEO at Derbyshire Wildlife Trust explains, “We are delighted that the Government has committed to ending the Badger Cull. However we are concerned at the slow pace of change and we feel the cull must be phased out much more quickly and replaced with vaccination as a matter of urgency.”

Derbyshire Wildlife Trust has been the leading organisation for badger vaccination in the country, something they have been working tirelessly on for seven years.

Tim Birch, Director of Nature’s Recovery at the Trust added, “Some of the information in the public domain is misleading and came as the same day that the Government announced that almost 40,000 badgers have been culled across England and devastatingly almost 3,000 have been culled in Derbyshire alone.”

Derbyshire Wildlife Trust urgently calls on the Government to stop and rethink their plans and find a way of implementing their own commitment to move from lethal to un-lethal methods of managing Bovine-TB.