Setting the minimum and maximum numbers in badger cull areas in 2025: advice to Natural England
Published 11 December 2025
Applies to England
© Crown copyright 2025
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Overview
Natural England is the competent authority for badger control licensing for the purpose of preventing the spread of bovine TB. It is a requirement of the guidance and the licences to set a minimum number in advance of each year’s cull.
This minimum number is provided in an authorisation letter that is issued to each cull company once the licensing authority is satisfied that the cull company’s preparations, planning and funding are sufficient to deliver a successful cull.
The purpose of setting a minimum number under the current licence is to ensure that the cull company delivers the required level of population reduction to achieve the expected benefits in controlling bovine TB.
This advice to Natural England sets out the approach for estimating the badger population in the cull areas in 2024 and the minimum number of badgers to be removed in 2025 and the minimum number of badgers that need to be vaccinated for a site in an Edge Area county to qualify for a no-cull zone.
The minimum number is intended to achieve a 70% reduction of the population relative to the initial starting population. The culling objective is for no more than 30% of the starting population to remain on conclusion of the cull.
The 70% target is derived from the Randomised Badger Control Trial (RBCT) where it was estimated that the culls achieved a mean of 70% control of the starting populations across the 10 areas (Woodroffe et al., 2008), which resulted in disease reduction benefits for the cattle herds in those areas.
Culling also needs to “not be detrimental to the survival of the population concerned” within the meaning of Article 9 of the Bern Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats. For that purpose, Natural England set a maximum number of badgers to be removed from the licensed area.
The approach to setting the minimum and maximum numbers was published by Defra in 2014 to 2024, in advice to Natural England.
The estimate of population size must relate to the whole culling area, including any land within that area on which no culling is planned to take place. Any population estimate will have some degree of uncertainty which leads to an interval around the population estimate within which the true population is likely to lie. However, operating with uncertainty does not prevent an effective cull from being carried out, as shown during the RBCT culls, where no minimum numbers or targets were set.
This advice is divided into 3 sections.
- Section A covers the areas where Supplementary Badger Culling (SBC) is taking place in 2025
- Section B covers areas where culling began in 2022
- Section C covers concluding remarks affecting all the areas
To ensure that the special status of the Low-Risk Area (LRA) remains, it is vital that we deal swiftly and decisively with any incursion of TB which involves both cattle and badgers. As such, adaptive management, where assessment of the evidence and consideration of a range of options takes place annually, is required. This is so that the most effective course of action is taken to enable eradication within the shortest timescale.
The UK Chief Veterinary Officer (CVO) advises that eradication can only be achieved in an area if infection present in the badger population is addressed alongside that in the cattle population.
This year in the Low-Risk Area, culling will take place in Area 73 – Cumbria, which is now in its second year of badger control operations. APHA delivered vaccination is taking place in 2 former LRA badger control areas in 2025; Area 54 – Lincolnshire has started badger vaccination, see Annex B, and vaccination is continuing within Area 32 – Cumbria.
Section A: Areas 45 to 53
In 2025, Areas 45 to 53 inclusive will continue Supplementary Badger Control.
Both minimum and maximum numbers of badgers to be removed are required in order to sustain the benefits of licensed badger control while avoiding local extinction. As in previous years, for SBC areas 36% of the year one cull total is set as the baseline, and the minimum and maximum numbers are set equidistant above and below the baseline so that the difference between them is equivalent to 25% of the pre-cull population. The minimum and maximum numbers are listed in Table 1 of Annex A.
This approach has been kept under review as culling in contiguous areas and the larger size of the cull areas could affect the relative levels of immigration and reduce the comparability of cull returns to those in the RBCT. Therefore, the amount of effort deployed by the cull companies and its spatial distribution will continue to be monitored given the uncertainty in the size of the remaining badger population.
Areas 4 to 9 inclusive ceased culling operations after completing the fifth and final year of their SBC licence in 2024. Areas 33 to 43 inclusive have now also ceased culling operations after completing the second and final year of their SBC licence in 2024.
Section B: Areas 62 to 72
As several hundred badgers have been removed from these areas in previous culls, methods based solely on an un-culled population are no longer appropriate. Instead, as in previous years, surveys of the number of active setts were used to estimate the current population.
To ensure that accurate assessments of sett activity were available to provide robust evidence to inform an estimate of the population and minimum numbers, all cull companies were instructed to carry out a thorough sett survey programme.
As described in detail in the 2015 advice to Natural England, the population can be estimated by multiplying the number of active setts by the number of badgers per active sett.
As described in 2018, the starting population is estimated by reducing the estimate of the population at the start of year two by one-fifth, to account for 20% population growth in the intervening period, and adding the number culled in year one. The minimum and maximum numbers are then calculated as in previous years, see Table 2 in Annex A.
Given the overall uncertainty associated with the methods and the range (lower to upper limits), we consider that it is still more prudent to manage the uncertainty by defining a realistic minimum number that aims to achieve the desired level of population reduction to secure the anticipated disease control benefits than to define it too high, with a risk of removing too many badgers.
In 2025, culling will continue for a second year in Area 73 within the Low Risk Area. As explained in the December 2017 consultation document and the government’s subsequent response, minimum and maximum numbers are of less utility in the Low Risk Area given the different aim of the cull. However, Area 73 is included in this paper for completeness, see Annex B.
For the purposes of determining the amount of vaccination required in 2024 to make a vaccination site in an Edge Area county eligible for a no-cull zone in 2025 inside areas beginning Supplementary Badger Culling, sites should meet the following criteria:
- For sites with an area of 2.25km2 or larger there should be at least 2.7 badgers vaccinated per km2. The 2.7 per km2 minimum is based on the approach set out in the 2022 Advice to Natural England in setting the number of badgers that should be removed from a cull area in its first year. This is to ensure vaccination coverage is equivalent to the required cull level
- For sites smaller than 2.25km2 the number should be at least 6 badgers which is equivalent to the number needed for a 2.25km2site to vaccinate 2.7 per km2. This is to ensure that small sites are awarded a no-cull zone only if they have vaccinated a sufficient number of badgers to warrant preventing a cull on adjacent land
Section C: Conclusions
Through the course of the badger control policy, we have learnt that there is uncertainty in estimating badger populations, and therefore in defining minimum numbers in subsequent years we needed to avoid false levels of confidence. As with previous years, we need to consider 2 realistic scenarios:
- That during the cull, there is accumulating evidence that the number of badgers in the cull area is low, and that the number of badgers removed, despite a high level of contractor effort sustained across the whole cull area, is towards the lower end of our estimates. In this scenario, if the minimum and maximum numbers were set too high, Natural England would need to consider adjusting the numbers down to bring them in line with the actual circumstances being observed in the cull, so as to manage the risk of too many badgers being removed.
- That during the cull, there is accumulating evidence that the number of badgers is higher than the minimum and maximum numbers suggest, either because the cull company quickly exceeds the minimum number, or because feedback from observations suggests there is a higher level of activity observed than expected. In these circumstances, Natural England would need to consider the need to compel the cull company to continue the cull by revising the minimum and maximum numbers upwards to ensure that the optimum disease benefits can be secured.
Daily data collected through the course of the cull about the level of effort being applied across the cull area, and locations of badgers removed, will enable Natural England to build an assessment of progress towards the cull total. This will allow Natural England to assess whether the estimated population was a reasonable reflection of the true population.
If the evidence suggests that there are more badgers than the estimates indicated (for example, because the number of badgers killed per unit effort is relatively high), Natural England will have the ability to revise the number upwards at an appropriate point, to ensure that the cull company is required to carry on the cull in order to achieve effective disease control.
Conversely, if the estimates are too high there will be a risk of removing too many badgers. In these circumstances, Natural England could, on the basis of careful consideration of the evidence and provided that the level of effort applied by the cull company has been sufficient, adjust the maximum number downwards at an appropriate point.
Annex A: Minimum and maximum numbers
Table 1: Minimum and maximum numbers for cull areas undergoing Supplementary Badger Culling.
| Area | Minimum number | Maximum number |
|---|---|---|
| Area 45 - Derbyshire | 425 | 1,675 |
| Area 46 - Gloucestershire | 54 | 284 |
| Area 47 - Herefordshire | 284 | 1,236 |
| Area 48 - Leicestershire | 82 | 432 |
| Area 49 - Oxfordshire | 128 | 621 |
| Area 50 - Shropshire | 256 | 2,382 |
| Area 51 - Somerset | 56 | 1746 |
| Area 52 - Warwickshire | 200 | 1,044 |
| Area 53 - Wiltshire | 64 | 329 |
Table 2: Minimum and maximum numbers for cull areas in their fourth year of culling.
| Area | Minimum number | Maximum number |
|---|---|---|
| Area 62 - Buckinghamshire | 577 | 1,006 |
| Area 63 - Cornwall | 31 | 243 |
| Area 64 - Cornwall | 81 | 230 |
| Area 65 - Derbyshire | 79 | 478 |
| Area 66 - Devon | 310 | 449 |
| Area 67 - Hampshire | 96 | 347 |
| Area 68 - Northamptonshire | 551 | 1,339 |
| Area 69 - Oxfordshire | 233 | 412 |
| Area 70 - Somerset | 17 | 90 |
| Area 71 - Warwickshire | 95 | 463 |
| Area 72 - Warwickshire | 34 | 864 |
Annex B: Summary of Low Risk Area licences
The aim of badger disease control operations in the LRA is disease eradication in cattle and other species. The epidemiological evidence from cattle cases, continued ‘found dead’ surveillance of wildlife and post-mortem examination of cull badgers is considered annually to determine the next steps to take the most effective route to eradication.
When assessing the most effective route to eradication, the following factors are considered:
- the most effective route is dependant on the epidemiological situation for an individual hotspot
- resourcing of interventions, with other options considered if the favoured option cannot be guaranteed to be delivered effectively
- giving certainty to the continued goal of reaching eradication of TB in England by 2038
Area 54 – Lincolnshire
A hotspot area was established in June 2018 following the disclosure of M. bovis in a cattle herd in southwest Lincolnshire in the LRA of England, near the border with northeast Leicestershire in December 2017 (Hotspot 23 (HS23)). Infection is thought to have originally been introduced to the hotspot via cattle movements from the traditional homerange of this clade (Staffordshire, Shropshire, Cheshire or Derbyshire).
There have been 3 positive badgers,2 in the LRA and one in the Edge Area portion of the hotspot, all identified in 2020 and linked to local cattle cases. Collection and post-mortem examination (PME) of ‘found dead’ badgers and deer are ongoing in the area.
In April 2025, APHA reported that 2 (2/46, 4.3%) badger carcases removed during cull operations were positive for M. bovis. After finalisation of pending results, a total of 3 badger carcases were positive for M. bovis (3/46, 6.5%).
APHA epidemiologists and ecologists have considered results from PME of culled badgers between 2020 and 2024, data from local cattle cases, the reduction in apparent prevalence and the repeated low prevalence of infection.
They also considered the areas performance in 2024, where it was declared ineffective by the CVO due to insufficient sustained and coordinated badger culling effort deployed across the area (Bovine TB: summary of badger control monitoring during 2024).
The CVO considered the analysis and recommendations from APHA experts. Her advice is that APHA-led vaccination of badgers should begin across the whole area in 2025. This reflects the repeated low prevalence of disease and the performance of the area in 2024. The likelihood that continued culling would eradicate disease from this area is low due to the risk of re-infection from the Edge Area, vaccination will go some way to prevent this.
Area 73 – Cumbria
A hotspot area was established in January 2023 in response to the increase in Officially TB Free status Withdrawn (OTFW) breakdowns in the area over the previous years (Hotspot 29, HS29). Enhanced TB surveillance measures have been implemented in cattle and wildlife across the whole hotspot area.
This includes an increase in cattle surveillance to 6-monthly whole herd testing and the ongoing collection of ‘found dead’ badger and wild deer carcases. The WGS clade of M. bovis associated with HS29 is B3:11, predominantly found in Cheshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, and northeast Shropshire.
M. bovis has been isolated from 6 badger carcases and was genetically related to the local cattle cases. Collection and post-mortem examination (PME) of ‘found dead’ badgers and deer are ongoing in the area.
In April 2025, APHA reported that 23 (23/449, 5.1%) badger carcases removed during cull operations were positive for M. bovis. After finalisation of pending results, a total of 24 badger carcases were positive for M. bovis (24/451, 5.3%). APHA epidemiologists and ecologists have considered results from PME of culled badgers, alongside data collected from continued cattle cases in the area.
The CVO has considered the analysis and recommendations from APHA experts. Culling operations began in 2024 and as such we only have one year of data, therefore the CVO recommended that industry-led culling operations should continue for a second year.
This is in line with previous advice where 2 years with no infection identified in the culled badgers should be observed to manage the risk that infection has been missed due to the imperfect nature of badger TB testing.
Culled badgers will continue to be tested and the results of this, alongside the ongoing intensive surveillance of cattle, will inform future disease control measures in badgers and cattle in this area.