Plans for a cull of badgers in bovine TB hotspot areas in NI hit a major setback on Wednesday, when wildlife campaigners won a long-running legal challenge.

Delivering his judgement, Mr Justice Scoffield said DAERA failed to conduct a “fair and lawful consultation” when it set out plans for a new TB strategy last year.

“Fairness required disclosure of much more of the Department’s rationale than was made available,” he said in the High Court in Belfast.

Mr Justice Scoffield also said former Agriculture Minister Edwin Poots was not adequately briefed about concerns raised by wildlife groups relating to “unnecessary suffering” of badgers.

“I will accordingly quash the respondent’s (DAERA’s) decision to implement a non-selective cull of badgers by way of controlled shooting,” he ruled.

However, the judgement makes clear that it is only the process that DAERA followed which is deemed unlawful.

Crucially, the court case did not challenge the legality of a badger cull itself.

“Nothing in the judgement should be read as any comment upon the substance of the options under consideration,” Mr Justice Scoffield said.

It means that DAERA can eventually push on with its plans for a badger cull, but it must first launch another public consultation process to address the issues set out in the High Court ruling.

“Assuming the Department wishes to proceed with a wildlife intervention element to the strategy, it will have to re-consult on that aspect of it in compliance with legal requirements,” the judgement states.

Major delay

However, the ruling is likely to lead to a major delay in the issue of bovine TB in wildlife being addressed in NI.

It is also unclear if DAERA can proceed with the next step of a new public consultation without a minister in place at the Department.

On top of that, further legal challenges by wildlife campaigners are likely if the process does eventually move on.

The current legal challenge was already a protracted affair, as it took almost a year for a judgement to be delivered since the case was heard in the High Court last November.

The judicial review case was jointly taken forward by local wildlife campaigners from the NI Badger Group and Northamptonshire-based organisation Wild Justice.