Politicians have belatedly accepted indiscriminate badger shooting is not the answer to keeping cattle tuberculosis-free.

A controversial cull believed to have wiped out 100,000 badgers since it began seven years ago is to be scrapped and replaced with vaccines.

Mind you, the government’s belated action comes with as many strings attached as a box of puppets. There is no definite deadline for the cull to end, just a wishy washy promise to phase it out by the mid to late 2020’s. Even then the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs retains the right to introduce new cull zones where there is evidence of badgers transferring TB to cattle.

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So badger shooting will stop. But it might not. This political fence-sitting, worthy of description by Yes Minister’s Sir Humphrey himself,is perhaps designed to keep both campaigners and farmers happy.

Badgers and cattle will in future be vaccinated against TB. Currently, more than 30,000 infected cattle a year are slaughtered which costs farmers £150million annually. Farmers blame badgers for passing on the disease but campaigners insist cattle are most likely to be infected by other cattle.

Badgers, with a UK population of around 500,000, are supposedly protected by law. Cattle are raised to be slaughtered for their meat.

If further evidence were required of inconsistent, slapdash attempts to protect wild animals it arrived in recent court cases. A Dorset-based fishery owner was jailed two months for shooting dead a protected wild otter to stop it taking his carp.

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Yet a barrister who admitted beating a fox to death with a baseball bat in his north London garden faced no criminal charges because an RSPCA investigation concluded the animal did not endure unnecessary suffering. Imagine whether you’d suffer if someone repeatedly swung a baseball bat against your head.

And hen harriers still frequently go missing over grouse moors patrolled by gun-toting gamekeepers.

Surely its time the government appointed a wildlife guardian to update and streamline reams of conflicting legislation, much of it drafted when animals were far more abundant than they are now ?

If you witness a wild animal being mistreated contact police or call the RSPCA cruelty line on 0300 1234 999.