Horsham district council will reveal this week where it intends to locate new settlements to meet government housing targets, with rival developers parading nine plans to build estates of up to 7,000 homes each on fields edged by areas of outstanding natural beauty and the South Downs national park.

The plans face an array of nimby opposition groups whose interests conflict, increasing community tensions and political discontent. The Conservative council is also “hopelessly divided”, said one developer, and a council source said ever-increasing housing targets sent from Whitehall were causing exasperation. The strategy will go to a full council vote at the end of the month.

“What is tearing us all apart is that when we win, others lose,” said Dave Tidey, a leading member of one of the opposition groups. “It doesn’t work. The government is standing back and letting the local authorities fall apart.”

Residents fear the destruction of habitats for turtle doves and purple emperor butterflies, as well as traffic chaos, with enough houses planned to accommodate a town the size of Dover.

Culling badgers may help to spread TB further as it disrupts local populations and drives them into previously uninfected areas, a new study has found.

Scientists say unless strict rules are followed it may be better to carry out no culling at all rather than continuing an ineffective operation that makes things worse.

Campaigns to eliminate animals such as foxes, bats and wild boar to stop diseases spreading have been carried out on numerous occasions, with mixed results.

The badger cull conducted between 1998 and 2005 to protect British cattle from TB was one of the largest of its kind ever conducted, resulting in the death of 11,000 badgers.

While some locations saw infections drop, the trial also led to the disease spreading further into previously uninfected cattle and badger populations.

But conservationists have questioned why Britain is not part of the effort to publicly defend the habitats and birds directives ahead of a review by the commission aimed at cutting red tape for business.

“The EU nature conservation directives have proven their worth and become an essential component of biodiversity conservation. It will not be possible to achieve the goal of the EU biodiversity strategy to 2020 without them,” say the environment ministers in an unprecedented letter to Karmenu Vella, the EU environment commissioner.

The two directives form the backbone of Europe’s nature conservation. The habitat directive aims to protect some 220 habitats and approximately 1,000 species. It led to the setting up of a network of Special Areas of Conservation, which together with the existing Special Protection Areas form a network of protected sites across the European Union called Natura 2000. The birds directive aims to protect all European wild birds.

There is growing fear in Europe that the tough conservation laws will be weakened at a meeting in December when they undergo a “fitness check”. EU president, Jean-Claude Juncker, has declared he would like to merge and overhaul the two directives to make them more “business-friendly” .

The omission of the UK environment secretary, Liz Truss, from signatories to the letter sent on Wednesday, has led some conservationists to infer that the chancellor, George Osborne, backs moves to weaken the legislation.