BADGER BUSINESS — FROM PROTECT THE WILD

Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more Badger business: Protect the Wild's first round-up of badger-related news A periodic digest from Protect the Wild on the badger cull and other news related to this treasured yet persecuted species PROTECT THE WILD NOV 19 READ IN APP Protect the Wild began writing regular round-ups showcasing the latest news in the struggle against fox hunting earlier this year. Moving forward, we will be producing similar periodic digests on the badger cull and other news related to this treasured yet persecuted species. Here is the Autumn round-up for all you badger lovers! In this overview, we cover news about a welcome success in a legal challenge against culling; an early-day motion on badger protection; the Lords’ efforts to safeguard badgers and other protected species from a dangerous bill; and the controversial eviction of badgers to build the Lower Thames crossing. black and white animal on green grass during daytime Photo by Vincent van Zalinge on Unsplash High Court rejects bid to hike legal costs of cull campaigners The High Court rejected Natural England’s bid to hike the legal costs for campaigners challenging the badger cull. This is a significant victory for badgers and for ensuring that wildlife campaigners retain the ability to hold the government to account. In May, Wild Justice and the Badger Trust secured permission for a legal challenge against Natural England to proceed. The case concerns the body’s decision to approve supplementary badger cull licenses in 2024 against the advice of its own Director of Science, Dr Peter Brotherton, a scandalous move that Natural England repeated again in 2025. Under the Aarhus Convention, environmental challenges have special protections that include capping the legal costsfor NGOs that bring them at £10,000. The point of this costs cap is to ensure that environmental challenges are not prohibitively expensive. Natural England had applied to increase the cap in this case, aiming to double the cost for Wild Justice and triple it for the Badger Trust. If successful, this would have risked both groups having to withdraw from the case. Thankfully, however, the High Court dismissed Natural England’s application – a judgment it had “no hesitation” in reaching. In other words, Natural England’s attempt to price the groups out from proceeding with the legal challenge failed. As a result, it will go ahead, with a substantive hearing happening on 16 and 17 December. Stay tuned. Green Party tables motion to protect badgers The Green Party’s Adrian Ramsay has tabled an Early Day Motion (EDM) on the subject of badger protection. These motions essentially serve as a way for MPs to put their views on particular matters on the record. This EDM raises the alarm about the government’s bovine tuberculosis (bTB) strategy allowing for “the continued killing of badgers, a protected species, until the end of this Parliament,” despite culling being “unscientific, ineffective and unnecessary.” It calls on the government to “immediately end its policy of badger culling” and prioritise other measures, such as cow vaccination, improved testing, and better biosecurity on farms. Like some MPs in a recent parliamentary debate on the cull, which was secured by a Protect the Wild petition on the issue, the EDM also promotes badger vaccination. Protect the Wild considers MPs’ promotion of badger vaccination to be seriously problematic as it perpetuates badger blame and distracts from the real cause of the disease: how bTB is managed in the cattle sector. The motion raises issues outside of the cull too, particularly proposals in the government’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill to “undermine” the Badger Protection Act 1992. As Protect the Wild reported in October, this bill includes plans to amend the badger act to allow for the ‘killing or taking’ of badgers in England for the purpose of development. Currently, licences can only be granted for developers to “interfere with a badger sett.” The EDM urges the government to “withdraw plans to weaken the legal protection currently given to badgers.” a small animal on a log Photo by Vincent van Zalinge on Unsplash Lords step up to protect badgers, government blocks them At the end of October, the House of Lords voted for an amendment to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill that would help to safeguard badgers and other wild species from being sacrificed in the name of development. The bill proposes that in areas where Natural England has drawn up Environmental Delivery Plans (EDPs), developers could pay a levy to free them from certain existing environmental obligations. According to the government, these as yet ill-defined EDPs will supposedly deliver “a package of conservation measures” at scale that will strategically compensate for any harm caused to wildlife from permitted developments and secure an overall “environmental uplift.” Wildlife and Countryside Link (WCL) explains it like this: “The reforms aim to streamline development and deliver environmental gains by replacing site-level safeguards with landscape-scale conservation measures.” As WCL warned, there is little evidence to suggest that this approach will help to conserve protected species – not to mention the severe welfare harms it will undoubtedly cause to countless wild animals located in development sites. Accordingly, the Lords-backed amendment proposed to exclude protected wildlife and habitats from the scope of EDPs, meaning developers would have to follow the existing procedures for projects that affect them. The amendment called for EDPs to focus solely on “tackling diffuse and cumulative environmental challenges,” such as nutrient neutrality, water management, and air quality, the New Civil Engineer explained. The amendment says this limits EDPs to issues “where approaches at a strategic landscape scale will be effective.” Considering that delivering conservation measures at scale is precisely what the government claims to be aiming for with EDPs, you might have expected this amendment to be welcomed. But no, housing secretary Steve Reed told Labour MPs to reject it when it was voted on in the Commons on 13 November, the Guardian reported. Yes, that Steve Reed, the politician who continued the badger cull as environment secretary, despite his party promising to end it while vying for people’s votes in the 2024 election. 240 Labour MPs dutifully complied and voted yes to rejecting the amendment, alongside 3 independent MPs. 130 MPs voted against rejecting the amendment – no Labour MPs were among them. Labour MPs also voted against a further Lords amendment that would have protected rare chalk streams. These are “one of the rarest freshwater habitats on Earth, and England is home to approximately 85% of them,” according to the Environment Agency. Labour’s rejection of amendments means the bill now returns to the Lords for further consideration, which is scheduled for 24 November. ‘Environmental vandalism’ and the Lower Thames Crossing A timely controversy has hit the local news in Thurrock. Independent councillor Gary Byrne has accused National Highways of “environmental vandalism” in its preliminary works on the Lower Thames Crossing, Thurrock’s Nub News has reported. Byrne says badgers are being pushed out of their habitat to make way for the crossing, which aims to link Essex and Kent through a tunnel under the Thames. Byrne said: “Badger setts are being sandbagged and sealed, with the approval of Natural England, who have issued licences allowing what they describe as ‘ecological mitigation works’. That phrase sounds harmless but in reality, it means forcing badgers and other wildlife from their homes so that construction crews can move in and tarmac over their habitats. This is not mitigation. This is environmental vandalism carried out under licence by the very agencies meant to protect nature.” National Highways confirmed that badgers are being uprooted in the works but said it is working with ecologists “to ensure badgers are not harmed and have time and space to move to safe locations away from where the new road will be built.” This controversy shows that the government’s case for the Planning and Infrastructure Bill is baseless. Protected species are not blocking development – the crossing is going ahead regardless of the presence of badgers. Under current rules, developers – National Highways, in this instance – can clearly still obtain licences for projects, they simply have to identify whether protected species like badgers are there and abide by certain rules when uprooting them for the permitted development. If the bill moves forward as it stands, the law would permit developers to kill or capture badgers, not just evict them. That’s if their presence is even known, which is not guaranteed. Under the proposed reforms, developers that pay the levy would not have to do wildlife surveys of their site ahead of works. Instead, the absurb plan appears to be that Natural England will do surveys up to 10 years in advance – meaning outdated data will likely inform what happens on the ground. This controversy over the Lower Thames Crossing’s impact on badgers reveals that, if anything, protections should be strengthened to safeguard wildlife and their habitats from developments. Instead, the government plans to do the exact opposite. grey lemur Photo by Hans Veth on Unsplash Any other badger business? A parliamentary debate on the cull took place in mid-October, during which the policy was “dismantled from all sides,” Protect the Wild founder Rob Pownall explained. To avoid repetition, we won’t cover the debate here, but please do read Rob’s focused post on the subject. Additionally, the Badger Crowd’s Tom Langton wrote about why Low-Risk Area (LRA) culling must be scrapped in October, which you can read on our Substack. LRA culling is effectively the final frontier of the cull policy – with a large LRA cull in Cumbria, which the Labour government initiated in 2024, being the only remaining cull that may take place next year, according to farming minister Angela Eagle. Tom says that LRA culling has proved to be a failure: “Approaching 2,000 badgers have now been slaughtered in the Low Risk Area since 2018, due to reckless movement of high-disease risk stock, inadequate testing and negligent control rules.” Help power the fight for British wildlife We’re funded entirely by kind people like yourself. We don’t have major donors or govt backing and so that’s why over the coming weeks you’ll see us doing all that we can to push our 2026 Wildlife Calendar. It’s just such a great way for us to raise funds and you get an awesome calendar in return! :) Packed with beautiful wildlife photos taken by our incredible supporters, like this one by Graham Brace for the month of September! Protect the Wild 2026 Calendar SHARE LIKE COMMENT RESTACK © 2025 Protect the Wild Protect the Wild, 71-75 Shelton Street Covent Garden, London, W2CH 9JQ Unsubscribe Start writing