Trial badger culls will go ahead in the South West later this year, in a Government initiative to stop the spread of bovine tuberculosis.

The locations for the highly controversial culls, which will involve the shooting of either free-running or trapped badgers, are likely to be revealed by Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman today, or possibly tomorrow.

One of the pilot areas will be on Exmoor and the other around Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, according to industry sources.

But there will not be a pilot cull in Devon – a major bovine TB hotspot county and widely expected to be the location of one of the two – because it was difficult to get a sufficient number of farmers to sign up in the individual areas.

An area of North Devon, however, is one of two reserve areas for a trial, if either Exmoor or Tewkesbury drop out.

The long-awaited announcement follows years of wrangling between farmers, the Government and environmental groups who are dead set against culling healthy badgers. Bovine TB is currently responsible for the slaughter of tens of thousands of cattle a year, with enormous cost to the taxpayer in testing and compensation – and heartbreak to the farming community, with families frequently seeing long-established dairy and beef herds decimated by the disease, and put in a position where they are unable to trade because of movement-restriction orders.

The culls will begin in the late summer, after the London Olympics, as the Government is anxious there will be enough police available to deal with any action taken by animal-rights demonstrators trying to prevent the shooting.

Natural England, the Government agency that will be handling the culls, will hold local consultations about the cull in the areas before they go ahead – so there is scant chance that the details about where and when will be a secret.

The pilot areas will be of around 30 square kilometres, the plan being to cull all badgers in 70 per cent of each area, irrespective of whether they are infected.

Up until about a year ago the Government had hoped to make use of a special test that would show whether a badger sett contained diseased animals, but the proposed equipment was proved not to be totally accurate.

Clearly a cull limited solely to diseased badgers would be a great deal more publicly acceptable; destroying wild animals that are suffering a painful and slow death and preventing the spread of a devastating disease to cattle, as well as other farmed animals like llamas and alpacas, also wild deer.

Once the six-week pilot schemes are over their impact will be assessed, with a view to rolling out the programme in greater detail. But while the prognosis is for the programme to have only a limited effect on the spread of TB over several years, farm organisations – frustrated by a decade of inaction by the last Government – believe it is the only option available, and that it should be supported.

Development of vaccines for both badgers and cattle is ongoing, but it will be several years because it becomes available.

While that would be the real answer to the problem, getting the EU to accept beef that had been vaccinated would be a lengthy and uphill struggle, particularly as only the UK and Irish Republic would want the derogation.

Five years ago a report into bovine TB in the wild badger population by the Independent Scientific Group concluded that the prevalence of disease after culling in badgers would be higher, not lower, a statement challenged by rural vets and farmer groups.

The Badger Trust, which will almost certainly launch a judicial review into the cull, maintains almost 90 per cent of the badgers killed would not be infected.