Welsh assembly unveils revised badger cull plans

Wales will attempt to push ahead with revised plans for a badger cull after previously losing a legal battle with wildlife campaigners, the Welsh assembly said today . The move comes less than a week after ministers in England confirmed they would license farmers to kill the animals in defined areas next summer. The Welsh assembly government believes it can overcome hurdles outlined by an appeal court verdict in July which dashed its intention of starting the cull, mainly in north Pembrokeshire, this year. The move is likely to provoke anger among opponents of culling, including the Badger Trust , which challenged the original plans, and the RSPCA . Elin Jones, its rural affairs minister, said she believed she could now meet the tests set by the 1981 Animal Health Act, which judges had earlier said she had failed to meet. She was satisfied that TB existed in wild badgers in the area, that it had been or was being transmitted to other animals, including cattle, and that "destruction" of badgers was necessary. "I am satisfied that, in the Intensive Action Area, it is necessary to cull badgers because there is no reasonably practicable alternative to culling badgers as a means of reducing TB in cattle. This is because it is the only proven method currently available to me," Jones told the assembly . A fall in the disease in cattle would be seen "in a relatively short time", and about 1,400 of an estimated 35,000 badgers in Wales would be culled and population levels would recover in five to ten years, Jones claimed. Vaccination of badgers had not yet been proved to reduce TB in cattle, she said, and could not resolve the problem on its own. Launching a consultation on her "provisional decision", Jones insisted there was "overwhelming support" for the TB eradication programme, including tougher on-farm controls. The Welsh plans differ from those in England in that hired contractors will trap and shoot badgers, rather than farmers under licence. As in England, no cull will start before May 2011 and that month's assembly elections may further delay operations on which no final decision will be made until the new year. The National Farmers Union in Wales welcomed the proposals. Its deputy president Stephen James said: "Bovine TB eradication in Wales has had many fences to jump and sometimes it has felt that the height has been increased in mid-race but I am confident that we are on the home straight and that the finishing line is in sight."