A second year of badger culling has begun in parts of Gloucestershire and Somerset in a bid to tackle bovine TB.
Last year, 1,800 badgers were killed in the pilot areas of west Gloucestershire and west Somerset. Just under 1,000 are due to be killed this year.
The government insists that culling is necessary but protesters argue shooting is not "effective or humane".
More than 26,000 cattle were slaughtered in England last year because of the spread of TB.
The four-year government-backed pilot aims to cull 70% of the initial population of badgers to test how effective, humane and safe a cull can be.
Badger cull facts:• Badgers are being shot by marksman for a second year to protect cattle from bovine tuberculosis (TB)
• The marksmen are shooting the badgers at night after putting food such as peanuts outside their setts
• Badgers are thought to pass on the disease to cattle through their urine, faeces or through droplet infection, in farmyards or in pastures
• The pilot is taking place in Somerset and Gloucestershire where 1,000 of the animals are due to be shot
• Protesters are critical of the cull this year which will take place without independent monitoring. The government said this was only due to happen in the first year of the cull
Q&A: The badger cull explained
Find out more about badgers with BBC Nature
Ministers and the National Farmers' Union (NFU) believe culling badgers will curb TB in cattle.
Andrew Guest, chairman of the NFU in Gloucestershire and spokesperson for GlosCon - the company carrying out the cull in the county - said if infected cattle are culled but badgers are not it was "leaving the circle open for re-infection again and again".
Environment Secretary Elizabeth Truss claimed the government's "comprehensive strategy" is supported by leading vets.
'Sacked the referee'But protesters are unhappy that independent monitoring has been dropped and attempted to have the cull halted at the High Court.
The move was rejected by judges, after which the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said: "We have always been clear that the independent expert panel's role was to oversee the six-week pilots in the first year of the culls only.
"This year we have made changes to monitor effectiveness and humaneness and the culls will be independently audited."
Protesters, who have called for alternatives such as vaccination to be considered, said Defra has "sacked the referee".
Dominic Dyer, of the Badger Trust and Care for the Wild, said culls are "ill-conceived and incompetently managed" and called the pro-cull arguments "discredited".
"Here we have a government and the National Farmers' Union pushing ahead with a policy simply because they don't have the guts to admit that it is wrong," he said.
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