TB in Cattle and Badgers

The cull is not about eradicating the badger. Typically, the population will be reduced to about 30% of what it was before. In areas such as Scotland and North Yorkshire, where we have low levels of TB, the badger population is not a problem. However, in areas where we have large numbers of badgers and high infection levels, controlling—not eradicating—the population at sensible levels might also have good knock-on effects for other species, such as bumblebees and so on, which have been crowded out by the badger.