Badger cull expansion plans abandoned

So badger culls were inhumane and ineffective, but they will continue anyway, without independent oversight? What kind of Mickey Mouse decision is that?

If there is no independent oversight for the future culls, God help the poor badgers! I feel extremely angry that such a ....up will be allowed to continue when it was proved such an expensive, cruel disaster.
I have every sympathy with farmers who experience T.B. in their herds, but why continue with something so ineffective? The world has gone mad.

Is there any information on how the floods may have affected the badger population?

Yet another stupid policy from this incompetent government.

Did anyone hear Eddie Mair interviewing Owen Paterson about the badger cull earlier this evening? I think I fell in love with Eddie Mair there and then. I could feel Owen Paterson squirming across the airwaves.

I agree, nightowl. Eddie Mair summed up the situation perfectly when he asked what was the point in having enquiries into new projects to see if they will work, if you go ahead regardless! It's a disgrace. I think they are afraid of losing the farming vote if they stop altogether, so blow the evidence, lets think about the polls!

www.edp24.co.uk/news/environment/why_are_reepham_s_badgers_going_to_cost_norfolk_35_000_1_3491530

Madness?

I'm not quite sure what point you are making, NfkDumpling. But that amount of money is a drop in the ocean compared with the cost of the cull which didn't work anyway.

The point I'm making is that in one part of the country badgers are treated as vermin while in another not so far away they're protected. We pay out to avoid harming them while a couple of hundred miles away people are paying out to have them destroyed. Both ways the taxpayer has to foot the bill. It just seems silly to me.

I heard on the farming programme this morning that the vaccination project in Wales has been done at a fraction of the cost and along with tightening up bio-security and cattle movement, the incidence of T.B has fallen by 44%. If this is true, continuing the cull makes even less sense.
I take your point NfkDumpling, and I can see how frustrating it must be for councils that are already hard pushed to make ends meet.

Just seen on local news that badgers in Warwickshire are to be vaccinated against bovine TB. In neighboring Gloustershire the cull is due to start again.