Jilly Cooper fights badger cull

The writer, who lives in the Cotswolds, has signed up to a list of residents who have pledged not to allow the creatures to be killed on their land as part of a pilot scheme this autumn. Ministers say the move is necessary to bring down levels of bovine tuberculosis, which was behind the slaughter of 25,000 cattle in England last year. But it has sharply divided opinion in the countryside, with the National Farmers’ Union backing the cull but many animal lovers believing it will be “brutal” and that it does not present a solution to the problem. Now Cooper has become one of 82 landowners in the Stroud area of Gloucestershire who have declared their properties to be “no cull zones”. The writer, who has 14 acres around her 14th century home in Bisley, said: “We have masses of badger setts in our woods and have done a lot of research and passionately believe that the badgers are not giving TB to cows. From The telegraph