The Trust has also written open letters to farmers and MPs expressing concern about the hardship farmers face from bovine TB and is asking people to support their public campaign to stop the cull.
A badger cull is expected to be announced shortly and to begin across over 50 areas in England this autumn.
The Wildlife Trusts oppose culling and believe the science used to justify the killing of thousands of badgers every year in the UK is flawed. A recent study by Derbyshire Wildlife Trust has shown that a badger cull cannot be justified in Derbyshire, including in the Government’s own terms, because there is no evidence that TB is endemic in badgers in the county (1). Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust’s own assessment of similar data for Nottinghamshire flags similar concerns.
Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust has been running a successful badger vaccination scheme, part funded by DEFRA, in the Vale of Belvoir on the Notts / Leicestershire border since 2015 and is concerned that a cull will result in vaccinated badgers being shot and disrupt the ability of the programme to expand.