OFFICIAL figures have revealed that every badger killed in the 2013 pilot badger cull cost the taxpayer £3,350 ... although campaigners claim it was more like £5,000 per badger.

According to the figures, 1,879 badgers were killed in the first round of pilot badger culls that were carried out in Somerset and Gloucestershire at a total cost of £6.3 million.

The Government said the costs were largely due to rigorous monitoring of the culls, with £2.6 million spent on humaneness monitoring, including post-mortem examinations, and £2.3 million spent on assessing efficacy.

But anti-cull campaigners, The Badger Trust, claim the figures published by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) fail to account for another £3.5 million spent on policing the operation.

Dominic Dyer, chief executive of The Badger Trust and policy advisor for Care for the Wild, has described the culls as “inhumane, unscientific and throwing money down the drain”.

He said: “If every badger killed last year cost the taxpayer £3,000 that would be a horrendous waste of money on a policy that leading scientists say won’t work.

“But the reality is that every badger killed actually cost £5,200 – and that is simply beyond belief.”

The culls carried out this year and last year are aimed at curbing the spread of tuberculosis in cattle.

A spokesperson for Defra said that doing nothing to stop the threat of bovine TB was “not an option”. They said: “England has the highest incidence of bovine TB in Europe.

“The cost of the badger culls need to be seen in the context of the devastating scale of the threat bovine TB poses to our farming industry and food security – £500 million over the last decade.

“Doing nothing is not an option.

“We are pursuing a comprehensive strategy, including tighter cattle movement controls, badger vaccination and culling.

“Many of the costs associated with the pilot culls last year were one-offs and have not been repeated this year.”

An independent expert panel concluded that "controlled shooting" of free-running badgers was not effective or humane, and wildlife campaigners have raised concerns that monitoring by the panel has not resumed for the second year of the cull.

The results of the latest cull carried out in September this year are yet to be released.