Welsh badgers have won a reprieve after the Court of Appeal ruled proposals for a cull unlawful.
The cull was proposed to help stem the spread of bovine TB, which has affected 64% of cattle herds in the area in the last six years.
However, judges held the Tuberculosis Eradication (Wales) Order 2009 made by the Minister for Rural Affairs in Wales unlawful, in Badger Trust v Welsh Ministers [2010] EWCA Civ 807.
They ruled the 2009 Order permitting culling in the whole of Wales was not supported by evidence and should be restricted to the pilot area and further held that Welsh ministers acted unlawfully in misinterpreting s 21 of the Animal Health Act 1981 as giving them power to cull if they could achieve a potential reduction in TB which was merely more than trivial or insignificant, and that they failed to carry out a balancing exercise to weigh up the harm involved to badgers against the potential benefit to cattle herds.
Lord Justice Stanley Burton says: “If the cull authorised by such an order were effective, the badger, an indigenous species, would be eradicated and become extinct in this country. I doubt that this is what Parliament envisaged or authorised when enacting s 21.”
