Wild Justice 50 - our Badger petition passes 100,000 signatures

 

 

Good morning! Yesterday our petition to end the shooting of Badgers passed 100,000 signatures. Thank you for all your support.

 

This means that it will, eventually, be debated in Westminster Hall by backbench MPs and a government minister will have to respond. Petitions of this type rarely, of themselves, change government policy but they keep up the pressure for change.  We would like to increase that pressure and will continue to promote the petition to gain more signatures right up until midnight on 24 March when it closes.

 

Support for the petition has come from right across the UK but has been particularly strong in those areas where Badger culling is taking place such as the southwest counties of Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Dorset and Gloucestershire, and also in Derbyshire where plans for Badger vaccination were well-advanced but have been disrupted by government pushing ahead with culling.

 

See the map of strength of support by Westminster parliamentary constituency here:

https://petitionmap.unboxedconsulting.com/?petition=333693

 

 

Why we care so much:

1. We care about Badgers and over 20,000 were shot in 2020, and in 2019 and DEFRA plans allow for tens of thousands more to be killed in the future. This is a massive government-sanctioned assault on a protected species.

2. We care about farmers and cattle too, and we see the Badger cull as a distraction from the main means of controlling bovine TB in cattle: better testing, movement restrictions and vaccination as recommeded by a recent report by Sir Charles Godfray FRS.  

.3 Shooting Badgers is cruel - this government has never stuck to the recommendations of an expert group in 2014 that 95% of shot Badgers should die within 5 minutes of being shot - the usual figure is always around double that level and some Badgers take more than 10 minutes to die. We believe that monitoring is inadequate.

 

How you can help:

1. If you haven't signed this petition yet then please consider signing now, here is the link - click here.

2. Ask your friends and colleagues to sign too please. You could forward this email to them or send them this link to the petition https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/333693

3. If you use social media such as Twitter, Facebook etc then spread the word there please. By the way, our Twitter handle is @wildjustice_org

4. Please note that the petition can be signed by anyone resident in the UK (not just in England, even though this is an English cull) and also by UK citizens resident abroad.

 

 

That's it for now. Thank you for your support.

 

  

 

Wild Justice (Directors: Mark Avery, Chris Packham and Ruth Tingay).   Photo credit: Badger, Chris Packham.