Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment he has made of the impact of the badger cull on the badger population.

We have never culled more than 10% of the badger population during any given year. The badger population of England is estimated at 424,000¹, with numbers rising each spring as cubs are born.

As part of the badger culling licensing criteria, for intensive and supplementary badger control, Natural England set minimum and maximum numbers of badgers to be removed, in line with Defra’s commitments under the Bern Convention. This is to ensure the badger control operations deliver disease reduction benefits without endangering the local badger population. Badger control operations are monitored by Natural England to ensure local extinction of badgers is avoided and to monitor the humaneness, safety and effectiveness of the culls.

[1] Judge et al. (2017) Abundance of badgers (Meles meles) in England and Wales. Scientific Reports. 7.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-00378-3/#:~:text=The%20expected%20badger%20population%20size%20is%20approximately%20424%2C000,Group%20with%20standard%20error%20and%2095%25%20confidence%20intervals