Wales Badger Cull
Welsh Government: Don’t cull badgers If for some reason the email link doesn’t open, please copy and paste the text of the letter below into your email client and send to Correspondence.LLyr.Gruffydd@gov.wales (thank you) people have taken action so far. Help us reach 15000 First name Last name Email Phone Subject Letter To the Welsh […]
BRILLIANT NEWS: Govt confirms Badger cull WILL end
Yesterday I sat down with representatives from other NGOs for an hour-long meeting with DEFRA Minister Angela Eagle MP. Within moments of the meeting starting, she said something we were all waiting to hear: this government will end the culling of badgers once the final Cumbria licence has played out. I reacted by pretending to […]
Badger cull debate petition
Thank you for signing ‘Parliamentary Debate: Please Speak Out Against the Badger Cull’. Our MPs heard us all – we know because we were in parliament for the debate! The petition is now closed. First name Last name Email Phone Keep me updated! I want to receive emails from Protect the Wild about this campaign […]
The Post Office Scandal of Wildlife: Badger Cull Exposed as a Catastrophic Mistake
The badger cull strategy, based on the results of the 1998 – 2005 Randomised Badger Control Trial (RBCT), put the wheels in motion for the widespread killing of badgers that has occurred over the last decade. Pushed by Defra and the NFU as the best way to control Bovine TB – a disease now widely […]
Badger cull MP page
End the Badger cull – attend the Parliamentary debate
A timely new probe strengthens case for ending the badger cull
More scientific analysis has been published discrediting the idea that badger culling can contribute to control of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in cows. The new evaluation comes amid a scientific review of bTB control measures as the government develops its elimination strategy for the disease. In 2024, researchers published an explosive study (‘Absence of effects of […]
Badger Cull has emptied an ancient woodland of its Badgers
A “quiet tragedy” has unfolded in a beautiful ancient woodland in Northamptonshire. Everdon Stubbs has lost its badgers, with previously thriving setts now standing silent, according to the Northamptonshire Badger Group. The badger cull is to blame. Due to surrounding landowners’ participation in the murderous policy, the group says badgers have “vanished” locally, including from […]
REVEALED: Farm inspection findings undermine case for badger cull
In England, badgers have been slaughtered in their hundreds of thousands since 2013 for the alleged role they play in spreading bovine tuberculosis (bTB) to cows. Now, freedom of information requests, seen by Protect the Wild, have revealed the state of biosecurity on farms participating in the cull. They show that a significant proportion of […]
Pressure mounts on Irish government to end its ineffective and cruel badger cull
Ireland’s badger cull is mostly killing individuals uninfected by bovine tuberculosis (bTB), The Journal has reported. The publication said post-mortem tests of slain badgers over the last five years reveal that over 80% of them were not infected with bTB. The findings have led to increased pressure on the Irish government to end the slaughter. […]
SUCCESS! Legal challenge against badger cull licensing gets go ahead
A legal challenge against Natural England’s granting of badger cull licences in 2024 is going ahead, after a judge gave permission for the claim to be heard in the High Court. Protect the Wild is thrilled by this news as it offers hope that the body will be held to account over its outrageous decision […]
Is the Badger Cull Working? Ask AI!
Over the last year Protect the Wild has been proud to work with Tom Langton, a highly-respected ecologist who has been a leading figure in the fight against the government’s slaughter of over a quarter of a million badgers to protect the dairy industry. Tom is a major contributor to the Badger Crowd website and […]
Badger cull shambles: Government set to miss key bTB targets for 2025
When the then Conservative government laid out its plans to move forward with a badger cull in 2014, it set goals to achieve certain targets by 2025. These goals relate to reductions in bovine tuberculosis (bTB), which is the disease badgers are being killed over. So, with 2025 upon us, are those bTB goals on […]
The Badger cull review petition
Stop DEFRA’s Sham bTB Review – Remove Conflicted Panel Members Now 3664 people have taken action so far. Help us reach 6500 First name Last name Email Phone Subject Letter Dear Professor Godfray and Minister Zeichner, We, the undersigned, write to express our deep concerns over the current DEFRA review of bovine TB (bTB) control. […]
REVEALED: Government discusses badger cull with farming lobbyists in off-the-record meetings
Following Labour’s general election victory in 2024, Keir Starmer said “the fight for trust is the battle that defines our political era.” However, new Freedom of Information revelations related to the badger cull show that his government is doing little in practice to earn the trust of the British people. Protect the Wild submitted a […]
‘New’ badger cull policy: still not good for badgers
On 30 August, Defra announced “Government to end badger cull with new TB eradication strategy”. It was, they said, the “first Bovine TB strategy in a decade to end the badger cull and drive down TB rates to protect farmers’ livelihood.” This announcement came less than two months after Labour was elected. They had promised […]
Labour government bins inherited badger cull plan
In some rare good news for badgers, the Labour government has binned proposals it inherited from the Conservative government that involved further potentially large-scale killing of the iconic mammal. The move is undoubtedly a welcome one for the conservationists, veterinarians, and organisations, that have been calling for an end to the badger cull. But what […]
SHOCKING MOVE: Labour expands badger cull?
Ahead of winning the recent general election, the Labour Party wooed nature-loving voters by vowing to “end the ineffective badger cull” in its manifesto. However, it appears the government is now considering expanding the cull, after just over one month in power. The badger cull, which has now been running for over a decade, has […]
Flawed science to take centre stage in Brian May’s explosive badger cull doc
The BBC will air the documentary Brian May – The Badgers, the Farmers, and Me on 23 August. The landmark film, which was four years in the making, promises to expose the flawed science behind the controversial badger cull. This years-long policy has seen over 230,000 of the beloved mammals killed in the English countryside. […]
THE KILLING CONTINUES: Defra orders new badger cull licences
Earlier this year, Defra (the government department working on behalf of the hunting, shooting, farming and fishing industries) launched a ‘sham consultation’, allegedly seeking input for plans to continue killing badgers for the dairy industry. If the government were to go ahead with those plans, licences might be indefinitely issued to kill 100% of badgers […]
Government badger cull plans on hold
Back in March, Defra (the government department working on behalf of the hunting, shooting, farming and fishing industries) launched a ‘sham consultation’, allegedly seeking input for its pre-decided plans to continue killing badgers for the dairy industry. If the government were to go ahead with those plans, Natural England would issue licences indefinitely to kill 100% […]
Badger Cull U-Turn: “Sunak now wants all the badgers dead”
Sunak now wants all the badgers dead and this looks like a last chance grab at getting widespread culling back in place so it is difficult for Labour to scrap it as promised, in favour of the urgent cattle testing policy revisions that Defra have suppressed with their BTB partnership cabal which was recently exposed on the Badger Crowd website.”
VICTORY: Plans for Northern Ireland badger cull quashed
Good news! Wild Justice and the Northern Ireland Badger Group (NIBG) have announced that they have won a judicial review, stopping the proposed badger cull in Northern Ireland. The press release from their solicitors, Leigh Day, states: “In a judgement handed down in Belfast this morning, Wednesday 25 October 2023, it was ruled that the […]
Labour pledges to end badger cull
The government’s annual badger cull is nearing an end, at least for 2023. For almost two months, cull contractors have been out in force, luring England’s badgers into fields with peanuts and then shooting them dead. Meanwhile, Labour has announced that it will end the cull for good if elected. At the start of the […]
FOIs reveal Badger cull approved in National Nature Reserves
UK authorities have permitted badger control operations to take place in England’s nature havens, according to new revelations. Freedom of Information requests involving Natural England, the Forestry Commission, and Forestry England, show that badger control activities, including culling in some instances, have been permitted in various nationally important nature areas since at least 2016. A […]
London Badger Cull Protest – Protesting a Decade of Dead Badgers
Please help protest a decade of the badger cull by coming to London on October 20th. Over the past 10 years, the government has licenced the deaths of a quarter of a million Badgers to protect the dairy industry from a disease of their own making – bovineTB. One of our most protected mammals, 260,000 […]
Newly released figures show the badger cull is far from winding down
The government has published the number of badgers it wants to kill this year as part of the cull to reduce bovine TB (bTB). Despite having announced the badger cull is winding up, the figures remain gut-wrenchingly high. On 7 September, DEFRA published its document setting out the minimum and maximum number of badgers it […]
Sad Badgers: Protesting the badger cull in Oxford
Yesterday Protect the Wild joined masked- and badger-suited members of the Oxford Badger Coalition and Oxfordshire Badger Group on the streets of Oxford. Under sunny skies and humid conditions (which made wearing a furry, cumbersome badger suit very hard work indeed so kudos to Betty and the rest!) we found ourselves in the midst of […]
New badger cull licences risk ‘as many as 29,000’ more lives this year
The government has announced licences for 11 new supplementary badger cull zones. While the ‘intensive culls’ are set to end, the new licences show that the massacre of badgers is far from over. Badger cull from Cornwall to Staffordshire Natural England published 11 new supplementary cull licences on 7 June. They cover areas of Avon, […]
Natural England just published figures for the 2022 badger cull and they’re heartbreaking
Natural England has just released figures for the number of badgers murdered by its cull in 2022. And the numbers for the cull’s decade anniversary make for bleak reading. On 5 April, Natural England published its review of figures for the intensive and supplementary phases of the badger cull during 2022. Defra organises the cull […]
Natural England has been covertly expanding badger cull areas
The government’s annual badger cull, which began in 2013, has always been shrouded in secrecy. And now Freedom of Information (FOI) responses reveal the extent of Natural England’s underhanded tactics as it murders our beloved species. Environmental journalist Tracy Keeling accessed the FOI requests, and reported her findings in the Canary. She found that since […]
Natural England asks for public comments on more badger culling
On 20 February, Natural England launched an online survey, giving the public the opportunity to comment after it had “received applications or expressions of interest for a Supplementary Badger Disease Control Licence within the counties of Herefordshire, Hampshire, Wiltshire and Avon.” But if you’re about to click on the survey, don’t for one moment think that […]
2022 Badger cull expose
Badger Cull 2022 Investigation This shocking footage exposes the badger cull for the sham that it is. A cruel, costly and ineffective mass slaughter of tens of thousands of badgers and for what? Dead badgers tipped into an open-air skip, operators with no regard for potential biohazards, unbagged gutted carcasses left inside a van, reckless […]
Badger Cull
The Badger Cull The government-sanctioned slaughter of a protected species As a ‘wildlife-first’ organisation, Protect the Wild is totally opposed to the badger ‘cull’. Since it began as a ‘trial’ in 2013, badgers have been killed in huge numbers to protect the dairy industry from bovine TB – a disease of cattle. The government’s kill […]
Grafton badger cull investigation dismissed as ‘trespass’
Life Peer Lord Benyon responds to question about Grafton Pet Crematorium investigation raised in House of Lords by Natalie, Lady Bennett. In early October Protect the Wild posted undercover footage taken by investigators over a three-week period at Grafton Pet Crematorium in Northamptonshire. The material we uploaded showed badger cull operators working at the crematorium. […]
Investigators expose reality of the badger cull
In their own words: investigators expose the reality of the badger cull In October 2022, badger cull investigators sent Protect the Wild video and photographs taken using hidden and handheld cameras at what is described by its owner – Mick Wills, a former huntmaster of the Grafton Hunt – as a pet crematorium. The undercover […]
Badger cull horror exposed
BADGER CULLHORROR EXPOSED HITStatement 2018 Covert cameras placed by the Hunt Investigation Team on vulnerable, unprotected badger setts in the Cumbria cull zone revealed for the first time the true horror of the badger cull. HIT’s team has protected badgers in multiple cull zones for many years. In 2018 hidden cameras were placed in order […]
Charities warn badger cull could lead to local extinctions
Charities fear badger cull could lead to local extinction. Charities have warned that going ahead with the badger cull again this year could place badgers at risk of “local extinction” in parts of England and have called for a suspension of the programme. The Badger Trust is leading a call to immediately suspend the […]
Government set to announce ALL badgers can be culled in specific areas
The government is likely to make an announcement that it is to cull 100% of badgers in specific areas of England from 2026. Back in early 2023, we wrote about Defra’s plan, but it was yet to be officially announced. Now the Independent has stated that the news is likely to become official within the […]
Oxfordshire: ‘Sad Badger’ protests government cull strategy
‘Sad Badger’, an activist from the Oxford Badger Coalition, sat under the Buttercross in Witney’s Market Square on the 17th of July to protest the government’s badger cull with placards saying ‘I am sad’ and ‘Oxfordshire’s badger shame’. The flawed and highly contested ‘badger cull’ is run by the Department for Environment Food and Rural […]
The government has set out its stall over culling badgers, and it’s not pretty
Environment secretary Thérèse Coffey said that she won’t keep to “artificial deadlines” over ending the badger cull. And her words come just as plans were confirmed for tens of thousands more deaths at the hands of farmers. At the opening of the Royal Cornwall Show, Coffey told the public that she believes there is “no […]
Northern Ireland: men responsible for fate of badgers have vested interest in cull
Northern Ireland’s Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (Daera) is inching closer to culling badgers after it asked companies to submit “expressions of interests to deliver the culling element” of its bovine TB (bTB) strategy. The deadline for applications is today (21 April 2023). The government department said that it will introduce culls in […]
Northern Ireland starts trapping and killing badgers, despite little evidence it works – Eye on the Wild #10
Welcome to the tenth edition of Eye on the Wild, our new weekly roundup designed to keep you up to date with the latest stories concerning British wildlife. If you have a story you think we should cover, email us at contact@protectthewild.org.uk Badgers in parts of Northern Ireland are now being trapped and tested […]
End the Badger Blame Game Petition
End badger culling and badger vaccination for good. people have taken action so far. Help us reach 10000 First name Last name Email Phone Subject Letter To Angela Eagle MP, Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs We, the undersigned, are calling on you to end the badger blame game and bring […]
Badger business: Protect the Wild’s first round-up of badger-related news
Protect the Wild began writing regular round-ups showcasing the latest news in the struggle against fox hunting earlier this year. Moving forward, we will be producing similar periodic digests on the badger cull and other news related to this treasured yet persecuted species. Here is the Autumn round-up for all you badger lovers! In this […]
Bureau of Bern Convention tells UK: End the Cull
An international wildlife treaty body has called on the UK government to swiftly bring its years-long slaughter of the iconic and protected badger to an end. Following a meeting in June, the Bureau of the Bern Convention issued a decision, which instructed the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to “move with greater […]
Badger dies overnight in snare on shooting estate
In May, Protect the Wild was contacted by a member of the South Yorkshire Badger Group (SYBG), a small group dedicated to the welfare, conservation, study, monitoring and public awareness of badgers. SYBG contacted us after being sent an email by a member of the public who had come across a badger caught in a […]
We Did It — 100,000 Voices for Badgers!
Thanks to you, our government petition to end the badger cull has now surpassed 100,000 signatures — the threshold needed to trigger a debate in Parliament. This is a massive moment in our fight to protect one of Britain’s most iconic wild animals. And it’s only happened because you signed, shared, and stood up for […]
Government bovineTB strategy must protect badgers from persecution
In 2013, Sky News exposed an illegal badger gassing ring involving 14 farms in southwest England. With the badger cull just getting underway that year, the farmers involved were convinced that killing the wild animals would help to control the spread of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in cows and had taken matters into their own hands. […]
Cheshire Police: ‘wrongful arrest’ settlement to badger defender
A wildlife defender has been awarded a settlement of £5000 by Cheshire Constabulary after being wrongfully arrested in 2019. David Griffiths was strip-searched on suspicion of having tampered with a badger trap, but the investigation was dropped due to lack of evidence. Nevertheless, he’s experienced police harassment and intimidation ever since. This is the second […]
DEFRA to hand taxpayer cash to NFU for badger vaccination study
Over the last decade, successive governments have used around £22 million of taxpayers’ money to facilitate the largely inhumane killing of more than 230,000 badgers for a ‘crime’ no-one is certain they have committed. Now, the government is apparently on course to hand £1.4m more in public cash to one of the badger cull’s biggest […]
Revealed: Vets Fighting to Bring Back Hunting and Badger Gassing
A group of veterinarians have been banging the drum about badgers in recent years, blaming the wild animals for causing bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in cows to an even greater extent than the government typically does. Indeed, they have criticised the country’s bTB policy for not focusing on badgers enough. This policy has seen hundreds of […]
Government condemns 10,000 more badgers while decrying nature crisis
When the Labour Party was elected earlier this year, many people concerned about the nature crisis hoped the change of governance would mean an end to England’s badger cull. After all, the party branded the now over a decade-long massacre of badgers as “ineffective” in its manifesto and pledged to end the cull. These hopes […]