Cull areas announced

Today the North Devon edition of the Western Morning News announced the preferred sites of the two pilot badger culls. From the report...:

One of the pilot areas will be on Exmoor and the other around Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, according to industry sources.

But there will not be a pilot cull in Devon – a major bovine TB hotspot county and widely expected to be the location of one of the two – because it was difficult to get a sufficient number of farmers to sign up in the individual areas.

An area of North Devon, however, is one of two reserve areas for a trial, if either Exmoor or Tewkesbury drop out.

In another part of this report, the privacy and security part of this project is again aired:

Natural England, the Government agency that will be handling the culls, will hold local consultations about the cull in the areas before they go ahead – so there is scant chance that the details about where and when will be a secret.

Now in his speech at the Oxford Conference which we touched on in this posting, Defra minister Jim Paice indicated that such actions were 'required by law'. By which law, or under what statute he did not explain, but cetainly when the Minstry's State Veterinary Service held the license, issued under the same part of the same Act, no such advance warning was given. In fact quite the opposite.

But then you can't believe everything you read in the press - this same article in WMN gives the cull area size as 30 sq km which could be a misunderstanding, a misprint or just plain mischief.