The Government's annual badger cull should be shelved this year because of the risk of marksmen spreading coronavirus, campaigners said tonight.
Tens of thousands of the creatures are slaughtered each autumn as the Tories bid to halt the transmission of bovine TB in cows.
Some 102,188 badgers have been killed since the controversial programme began in 2013, with 35,034 dying in last year's scheme, which operated in 40 areas of England from Cornwall to Cumbria.
The cull will begin to be phased out in the next few years, with vaccination of badgers being ramped up instead. But animal welfare campaigners fear tens of thousands of the creatures are still doomed to die before the cull is completely stopped.