Campaigners threaten legal challenge to badger culls
Tom Nicholson ©Rex Campaigners have threatened to take legal action against Natural England unless plans to begin badger culling trials are dropped.
The challenge to the culling trials which are due to start in Gloucestershire and Somerset in the coming weeks, was launched by rock star Brian May’s charity The Save Me Trust.
A spokesman for the trust said that the charity’s lawyers had written to the chief executive and the chief legal adviser of Natural England.
The letter warns the officials that if any licences to cull badgers are “either activated in Gloucestershire and Somerset or any new licences granted for this purpose anywhere, then the lawfulness of the decisions to do so will be challenged by a Judicial Review in the High Court”.
It added: “To continue the culling of badgers is unlawful as it does not rationally serve the statutory purpose which permits the killing of badgers only to achieve the aim of preventing the spread of disease.
“Additionally there has been a fundamental failure in the consultation process, a logically flawed approach in calculating badger numbers and a failure in Gloucestershire in any event to meet its minimum targets in 2013 and 2014.”