Last year's badger culls in Gloucestershire and Somerset have cost more than £7m in total - the equivalent of over £4,000 per badger killed, according to Care for the Wild charity. Government ministers and the National Farmer's Union believed that culling badgers would significantly reduce bovine TB. Despite extensions, both culls fell well short of their initial targets, in what some experts and organisations are labelling the "most disastrous and expensive wildlife culls in history". The exact figures for policing the culls is yet to be released.
|