Please take time to read this post and we urge you to take the time to respond to the survey. As a group we need to do all we can to put pressure on the decision makers to end the cull of badgers. Please spend some of your time to help.
Thank you - North East Hampshire Badger Group Committee
From Wild Justice -
The Defra Badger cull consultation closes on Monday at midnight. It's a terrible consultation document - we would say it is often misleading, and it is difficult to understand and difficult to follow.
Nevertheless this is an opportunity for you to tell Defra how you feel about their Badger cull plans and we suggest that you could usefully spend 20 minutes or so doing that, and also telling Defra how bad you think their consultation is, by answering six of the 19 questions they pose in their consultation document.
What you say is entirely up to you, but here are some gentle pointers from us. Wild Justice will be spending chunks of the weekend putting together a much more detailed response (even though the weather forecast looks good for being out and about and seeing wildlife).
Here is the link to the online survey: https://consult.defra.gov.uk/bovine-tb/bovine-tb-consultation-wildlife-cattle/
There are 19 questions in all, but we suggest you could answer just six questions: 1-4, 5 and 9 and make very useful points, but if you feel minded and competent you might want to have a go at some of the others.
Questions 1-4 are about who you are - these are easy!
Question 5 asks whether you agree with Defra's objective. That should be easy but, as we have pointed out before, it is difficult to identify the objective and distinguish it from the proposal. It is possible to agree (or not) with the objective (if you think you can identify it) and not agree with the proposal - you aren't specifically asked whether you agree with the proposal.
Basically, you are being asked whether you agree, disagree or don't know.
If you you feel that you have a good understanding of what is proposed and the basis for it then you can choose to agree or disagree in question 5.
However, if you feel that you needed more information and better explanation of the issues, either because some were badly explained, misrepresented or largely omitted then you might want to tick the box for 'I don’t know/I don’t have enough information'.
However you answer Question 5 we would urge you to answer Question 9 as well, and use the text box to tell Defra that you feel their consultation paper is very poor.
Question 9: You might want to start your answer to Question 9 with words like these:
'I responded to Question 5 by choosing the option [name the option you chose] on the basis that I believe that [only you can say] but I am not sure that my understanding is correct because the consultation paper is very difficult to understand for any layperson.
The consultation appears to regard Badgers as a very important source of bTB infection in cattle, in places it appears to regard them as the most important source, and yet my reading of the science is that this is untrue. I believe that many others will have been pushed towards agreeing with the Defra proposals through the wording of the consultation paper.
Also, there are important areas that would be pertinent to my personal consideration of Defra's proposal which are almost entirely omitted from the consultation paper. These include: the cost of the proposals, the welfare aspects of culling Badgers by free-shooting and the impact on the Badger population (it is a protected species after all) of this scale of cull.'.
There may well be other examples which you could cite in responding to Question 9.
Please consider responding to the Defra consultation to tell the government what you think about the proposed cull and about their consultation paper.
We will understand if you feel that going out for a walk and hearing some bird song is a much better way to spend your time than filling in a Defra consultation paper. But, honestly, it won't take you very long to respond, and you can probably do so in very few words, and if Badgers could speak they would thank you for sparing the time.
Have a good weekend!
Thank you!
Wild Justice (Directors: Mark Avery, Chris Packham and Ruth Tingay).
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