COURT OF APPEAL GIVES BADGER TRUST APPEAL GREEN LIGHT
The Badger Trust has been granted permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal against the High Court’s refusal to quash the decision of the Coalition Government to allow the killing of badgers in England. The appeal will be heard on the 11th of September.
The Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) seeks to include culling in its bovine TB (bTB) eradication programme. The Badger Trust considers that vaccination alongside stringent cattle testing and movement restrictions is the more effective way forward and that culling will only make matters worse at great cost to farmers, cattle and badgers. If culling were to go ahead in zones the size of the Isle of Wight, up to 40,000 badgers could be killed.
Lord Justice Laws granted permission on the Trust’s ground that the Secretary of State had unlawfully used the licensing powers in section 10(2)a of the Protection of Badgers Act 1992. This allows killing badgers (normally a criminal offence) for the purposes of preventing the spread of disease. In fact, on DEFRA’s own evidence, culling as proposed will cause the spread of disease.
David Williams, chairman of the Trust, said: “It is vital for the law to be clarified when it concerns the wholesale slaughter of a wildlife species in what we see as a vain attempt to prevent the spread of disease. At the judicial review hearing in June, it was accepted that culling would spread the disease and, only after nine years, produce a marginal slowdown in the rate of new TB incidence (12-16% is the best case scenario but only if the RBCT* methodology were to be followed precisely: it would not be)”.
Appeal
Mr Williams added: “This action will impose substantial further costs on Badger Trust, which is a comparatively small charity. Consequently we have issued an appeal to the local badger groups on whose behalf we act and to our many supporters. I was delighted to hear that the first donation, for £50, arrived via our website within 12 minutes of the appeal going out”.
[box style=”rounded” border=”full”]If you would like to Donate to the Badger Trust to help them pay for the appeal against the cull please click [button link=”http://www.badger.org.uk/content/J-Donate.asp” color=”green”]Donate[/button][/box]