Yesterday brought a handful of us together to campaign against the horrific, unjustified and prolonged badger cull. We were joined by Peter Hambly, Executive Director of Badger Trust and Zoe Egan, the Trust's Group Co-Ordinator as well as photographers Rachel Bigsby and Lee Douglas Brown. If you like wildlife photography, check Rachel and Lee out on instagram! Huge thanks to those who could make it in person and to all those who sent well wishes and moral support.
We were photographed at one of the county roadsigns with placards highlighting the number of badgers culled, entirely needlessly, in 2021 both in Hampshire and Nationally. Then we had a wander through prime badger territory to "Badger Way" for more photogaphs and to post our #CanTheCull cards to our local MP.
The target cull numbers for Hampshire this year are even higher than the 578 animals slaughtered in 2021. We'll continue to argue vociferously against the cull and I'll be writing to our local MP and new Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs shortly asking, as a consituent, for a meeting to discuss his views on the cull. In the meantime, he should hopefully have received the postcard I sent him and will have noticed an influx of social media messages yesterday once his #TellRanil iniative had been highlighted by Badger Trust on Tuesday night across all social media platforms!
Badger Trust issued a press release last night about yesterday's protest including an impressively unscripted piece to camera by Peter Hambly. You can read and watch that here.
With Ranil Jayawardena now holding the reins at DEFRA we'd like to make the most of being a badger protection group right in the middle of his constituency and will be considering what similar events and protests we can hold around the area. Until then, we'll be continuing to survey, monitor and protect setts, attend rescues and recover RTA victims where possible and do whatever else we can locally to look after our patch.
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