Since 2013, approximately 250,000 badgers have been killed in England. This represents roughly half of the estimated national population.
The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government of the time bowed to pressure from Defra and, under the influence of the 1990s/2000s Krebs trials, introduced ‘pilot culls’ of badgers in Somerset and Gloucestershire. This all happened in response to concerns over rises in the occurrence of bovine tuberculosis (bTB), and there had been some suggestion that badgers could be implicated in the cross-species transfer of the disease to cattle.
Yet even Lord Krebs, who chaired the original trial team, stated in 2012: “The scientific case is as clear as it can be: this cull is not the answer to TB in cattle.”
The permitted cull methods for the pilot were free shooting at night and cage-trapping followed by shooting. The government’s aim was to kill 70% of badgers in each cull zone.
Public fury and fierce resistance
The angry reaction from the public was unexpectedly fierce and intense. Nightly patrols and protests against the cull were organised and manned by activists and concerned citizens alike. Policing the two pilot areas alone ended up costing £2.6mn, such was the force of the resistance. Nevertheless, over six weeks, 1,879 badgers were killed, at a cost of roughly £5,000 per animal.
Prominent figures, including astrophysicist, musician and animal welfare activist Sir Brian May, along with veterinarians and scientists, spoke out against the inhumane methods used. Badgers were sometimes shot without being killed outright and suffering lingering deaths or were being left unmonitored in cage traps during the heat of summer.
Hazardous waste, and improper measures
As well as sabotaging the killing of badgers, activists also exposed the grim and secretive logistics behind this government initiative, releasing footage of a badger body store – a stone barn in a Derbyshire village. The barn, situated in a sheep field, had a large, open window.
This would seem to have breached Defra’s own guidance, which stated that body stores must not be easily accessible to wildlife or ‘vermin’ and EU regulations (then in force) prohibited body stores on farmland.
Later on, other body drops were exposed across the country where dead badgers in plastic bags were deposited by their killers and collected daily, thrown in the back of a van to be taken for incineration. Badgers killed in the cull were classed as ‘hazardous waste’.
Ineffective and costly
The culls were not only cruel: they were ineffective. Thousands of badgers died, yet bTB rates in cattle remained high. But rather than end the cull or re-evaluate the policy, the government decided to roll it out to even more parts of the country.
Activists and other opponents of the scheme responded by increasing their efforts, covering ever-wider zones. By 2018, the cost to the public had exceeded £50 million.
In 2024, Sir Brian May’s BBC documentary, Brian May: The Badgers, The Farmers and Me, challenged the scientific basis of the cull, showing that it was cattle-to-cattle transmission – and not infected badgers – that was the main source of bTB.
A turning point
With public opinion firmly against the cull, the Labour party pledged in its 2024 manifesto (p59) to phase out killing and said it would introduce vaccination instead.
Defra has confirmed that no new badger cull licences have been issued in Cumbria – the last remaining cull zone in England.
“We remain optimistic that the badger culls are over in England,” said a spokesperson for the Hunt Saboteurs Association. “But we will be ready should they ever start again.”
Wales in the crosshairs
However, the fight has not yet been won in the UK.
In Wales, Plaid Cymru is leading the new government and claims that its plan is to use a ‘science-led’ approach to bTB. There is still a fear that this could potentially open the door “to the use of badger culling as a management technique” moving away from the previous cattle-focused strategy.
Activists’ attention will remain focused on Wales.
Remembering the fight
For over a decade, activists – known as badger cull sabs – have patrolled night after night, chasing shooters away from setts and shielding a native animal that successive governments have blamed for the dairy industry’s biosecurity failures.
“When we look back at the long years of fighting the badger cull in England, we remember first and foremost the innocent lives lost. These shy creatures just wanted to live. They did not deserve to die. We also remember the huge numbers of ordinary people who achieved extraordinary things, who came together as strangers united by the determination to fight for badgers and who saved countless lives in the process.”
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