New licences to kill thousands of badgers were granted to landowners in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire this summer, the Government has revealed.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) quietly published information this weekend showing which counties Natural England has licensed badger culling in for 2022.

This list of 69 cull areas includes many counties, such as Oxfordshire, where culling has happened before, but also 11 new cull locations, one of which is Buckinghamshire.

Estelle Bailey, Chief Executive of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire & Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust, said:
“We are extremely saddened that badgers in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire will now be culled under these new licences. This is a bleak day for wildlife. The Government has already decided that culling is not the answer, pledging to stop issuing new licences after 2022. To continue allowing the slaughter of thousands more badgers in the meantime is obscene.

“BBOWT has been vaccinating badgers since 2014, which is a much more humane and cheaper way to tackle bTB than culling. We’re not asking the Government to change its policy – just to do what it’s already promised, but to do it faster. It should stop the cull now.”

Badger cull licences granted by Natural England allow badgers to be killed with a shotgun by a licensed professional. The policy aims to help landowners control the spread of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) which is carried by badgers and can infect cattle.

According to DEFRA’s licensing advice to Natural England, between 23,000 and 68,000 badgers could be shot under the 69 licences granted this year.

The badger cull licences that have just been published on the DEFRA website are all dated 26 August – this means that the anonymous landowners who obtained the licences may have been culling badgers for two months already in an attempt to control bTB, despite the fact that some experts say this approach is not effective.

The Government announced last year that it would stop allowing badger culling from 2025 and instead push for vaccination of badgers and cattle in a drive to eradicate bTB in England by 2038 - however it is continuing to grant new cull licences in the meantime.

Last autumn Natural England granted cull licences to landowners in seven new areas, including Oxfordshire and Berkshire.

The latest licence applications - including those for Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire - were revealed in February this year when DEFRA ran a consultation on them as usual, however the department has only now confirmed which applications were successful.

BBOWT has been running a successful badger vaccination programme since 2014 and has inoculated hundreds of animals over a 20km2 area covering its own nature reserves, council land, farms and private estates.

The results have proven there is a much more humane way to tackle bovine TB that is also at least 60 times cheaper per badger than culling.

Joan Edwards, director of policy and public affairs at The Wildlife Trusts, said:
“The Wildlife Trusts are horrified that 11 new areas have been approved for badger culling in 2022.

“We believe an evidence-based and scientifically-reliable approach must be developed to counteract the risk posed to cattle by bTB. Culling badgers is not the answer. Badgers are not the primary cause of the spread of bTB in cattle – the primary route of infection is from cattle-to-cattle. There is work being done to accelerate the introduction of an effective cattle vaccine and improved bTB testing in cattle – these offer the best long-term way to reduce bTB in the cattle population.”