During the summer more than 800 people in the Forest of Dean signed a petition asking the district council to support and assist a volunteer group of fully government trained and licensed local people to vaccinate badgers against bTB (bovine tuberculosis) in the Dean.

The petition presented by Mr Keith Childs, author and local badger expert, was received favourably at full council in October, then deferred to scrutiny who recommended the grant of a one off payment of £5,000 to assist with set-up equipment costs.

The scrutiny meeting in November was also attended by a NFU spokesman, who also represents Gloscon, the company carrying out badger culls around Newent, and a vet who appears to advise this company.

Scrutiny weren't swayed by their piecemeal picking of random statistics to undermine the efforts of the voluntary group to vaccinate the many healthy badgers in our area.

Gloscon are currently in the process of signing up farmers in new cull zones in our county.

In the week and a half following the scrutiny meeting, council's mood changed and the request for support to vaccinate our local badgers was lost by two votes at December's full council meeting.

I would recommend those who signed the petition, and think our badgers should be protected, read comments made by their councillors when minutes become available and judge for themselves whether the council made a well-informed and balanced decision.

– K Nicholls, Forest of Dean resident.