Badger cull legal action costs Welsh Assembly Government £57k

Badgers have landed the Welsh Assembly Government with a £57,446.65 legal bill.

This is the cost of its unsuccessful efforts to fight legal action brought against its proposed badger cull in north Pembrokeshire and parts of Ceredigion, the BBC has reported after it lodged a Freedom of Information request.

The total included £20,000 paid towards the legal costs of the Badger Trust, which last month won a Court of Appeal case to halt the cull.

Lord Justice Pill said the assembly government was wrong to make an order for the whole of Wales when it consulted only on the basis of an Intensive Action Pilot Area, which only supported a cull based on evidence within that area.

Ministers had intended to have some 1,500 badgers killed to try to prevent the spread of tuberculosis in cattle.

Farmers' unions described the decision to stop the cull as a disaster for farming.

But the Badger Trust said that “killing badgers can play no meaningful part in the eradication of bovine TB and that robust cattle measures are sufficient”.