A WILDLIFE charity has responded with dismay to Government plans to allow volunteers to organise badger culls.

The coalition is committed to culling badgers in an attempt to tackle bovine TB, spread by the animals, which is having a significant impact on the cattle farming industry.

But plans to allow people to set up their own shooting expeditions have been greeted with concern by Leatherhead conservation charity Wildlife Aid.

Founder of the charity Simon Cowell said: "Encouraging farmers or anyone else to go out and cull badgers is criminally irresponsible, potentially highly dangerous, and totally pointless in terms of controlling the spread of bovine TB, even if the culling is strictly regulated and licensed."

Badgers are

a protected species and it is illegal to kill them but the proposals would

deregulate this, allowing groups of volunteers to organise shooting

expeditions in affected areas after applying for a specific licence under

the Protection of Badgers Act.

Mr Cowell said: "If we are not careful this will lead to a lot of would-be animal controllers going out into their gardens and into the countryside taking pot-shots at animals.

"Culling, when done at all, must be carried out by skilled professional marksmen, not trigger-happy amateurs."

Government figures showed 25,000 cattle were slaughtered last year because of bovine TB costing the taxpayer more than £63 million in England.

But evidence for culling as a solution is disputed after a 10-year trial by independent scientists concluded culling "can make no meaningful contribution" to the control of bovine TB in cattle.

Mr Cowell said: "We already know from previous tests that these culls have limited impact, if any at all, on the spread of the disease, and the solution is to focus on the cattle, not the badgers.

"There is a sensible, logical and viable alternative solution to these culls – and that is to concentrate on developing a vaccine for cattle."