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Welsh badger cull efforts intensify

FARMERS WEEKLY
12 April 2011
Radical measures to eradicate bovine tuberculosis in Wales are set to intensify with less than a month to go before the earliest possible culling date of 1 May. Private contractors have been hired to trap and shoot about 1,500 badgers in the area of north Pembrokeshire designated for the cull.


And Wales' rural affairs minister, Elin Jones, said she would be taking advice from the Countryside Council for Wales on the precise date of when a cull may start. That date depends on whether young badgers have been weaned and can live away from their mothers in the wild.

During previous badger cull trials, carried out by DEFRA, no killing was allowed before 1 May, the traditional end of the closed season.

Last year, preparations in Wales suggested a date in the first week of May had been earmarked, before the cull was sidelined by a legal challenge. But seasons can vary across the country and monitoring of setts in west Wales is still being conducted.

A comprehensive survey of badgers setts in the 111 square miles of the cull zone in west Wales was carried out last year before the High Court called a halt to the plan.

It is understood that much of this data will be used this time around, avoiding the expense and time of repeating the exercise.

A member of the campaign group, Pembrokeshire Againt the Cull, whose farmland is within the cull zone, said she had yet to be approached for permission to enter her land for sett surveying.

Whether the cull will get underway before the 5 May Welsh Assembly Government elections remains to be seen, but it is thought unlikely.

The cull is being used by campaign groups and political adversaries as akey election issue, and the pro-cull lobby is concerned that a change of administration and key figures at the top of the Welsh government could throw doubt on the cull's future.

A new government could decide not to use the powers that the Badger (Control Area) (Wales) Order 2011 gives them or, because the order allows access for vaccination, it could opt for a less controversial route.

But the farming industry has been hopeful that a new government would show the same resolve as was demonstrated when the order wasconfirmed by an assembly vote.

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