Badger Trust’s Day of Action unites wildlife and nature campaigners against the badger cull
- Badger Trust Staff Team
- Sep 3, 2024
- 4 min read
Campaigners join the charity’s peaceful protest to call on the new government to end the cull now as intensive badger killing restarts.
Chris Packham: ‘The blood of 230,000 badgers drips from the hands of cruel politicians, inept agencies and the abject mischief of the farming lobby’.

Badger Trust and allied wildlife and nature groups are holding a demonstration and mass lobby of Parliament today, Tuesday, 3 September, from 11 am to 2 pm. We come together in a powerful display of unity to call for the new government to end the cull immediately as intensive badger killing begins again.
Wildlife champion Chris Packham, who will speak at the event, branded the badger cull “completely unscientific, brutally inhumane, wholly ineffective, incalculably shameful.”

“The blood of two hundred and thirty thousand badgers drips from the hands of cruel politicians, inept agencies and the abject mischief of the farming lobby.”
He added:
“Conservationists furious, farmers lied to and abused, the public confused … and still it goes on. Who will finally find the integrity to listen to the facts, really help the farmers and stop murdering our beautiful and precious wildlife?”
Secretary of State signs off licences to kill badgers
New DEFRA Secretary of State Steve Reed MP has followed in the footsteps of DEFRA Secretaries of State Owen Paterson and Liz Truss in signing off licences to kill tens of thousands more protected badgers on top of over 230,000 already slaughtered.
These government-authorised licences will kill around 50,000 badgers in 2024, with plans to slaughter the same in 2025 and for another five years under the new bTB strategy released by the government on Friday, putting the badger at threat of local extinction in parts of England.
Peter Hambly, Chief Executive of Badger Trust, said:
“This new government continues the old government’s policy of targeting and scapegoating badgers.
They condemn badgers to death with a relentless focus on misinformation and a failure to deal with the ignorance about the true causes of bTB spread from cattle to cattle."
"In its election manifesto, Labour described badger culling as “ineffective”; so why did the intensive badger cull start again this weekend under their watch?“
Focus on cattle to stop the spread of bovine TB
Government figures show that 94% of bTB spreads from cattle to cattle, and that badgers are 800 times more likely to be infected with bovine tuberculosis by cattle than to infect cattle themselves.
A recent BBC documentary by Brian May revealed how far the government has shifted from supporting farmers and finding effective solutions to the bTB crisis, demonstrating Badger Trust’s repeated assertion that the answer to controlling bTB spread lies in cattle-focused measures.
Event speaker Dr Mark Jones, Veterinarian and Head of Policy at Born Free Foundation, explained:
“Since 2013, around a quarter of a million badgers have been killed under licence, supposedly to reduce the spread of bovine TB among cattle. Yet the evidence for any substantial disease control benefits is severely lacking and hotly disputed. The Labour party itself described the culls as ‘ineffective’ in its election manifesto.
Bovine TB remains a serious problem for cattle farmers and their businesses, but there is no excuse for killing badgers, and there never has been.

Government ministers, officials, and those in the farming and veterinary industries who have perpetuated the message that badgers are to blame have let farmers, their cattle, and our precious wildlife down badly. This has to stop.
Experience in Wales and Brian May’s research have shown how bovine TB can be controlled by focussing on cattle-based measures and farm biosecurity. One more badger killed in the name of this unscientific, ineffective, inhumane and unnecessary policy is one too many.”
Green industrialist Dale Vince OBE added:
“The change of policy from our new government is welcome, but five years is too long to phase out this senseless policy of wild animal slaughter…..cows are the problem not badgers, the announced efforts towards a cow vaccine for bovine TB is as logical as it is welcome."

"Especially given that bovine TB spreads from cows to cows in 94% of cases, badgers are hardly the root cause. With costs of around £100 million a year for over a decade, the current policy is an expensive, ineffective folly”
Event information

From 11 am gather at Parliament Square Green
From 11 am, a united front of representatives from badger groups, wildlife and nature organisations, and badger supporters will gather at Parliament Square Green, opposite the parliament building. This committed coalition will stand together in a peaceful and legal demonstration against the ongoing badger cull.
From 12 noon listen to speakers against the cull
From 12 noon for about an hour, campaigners including Chris Packham, Dr Alice Brough, Dr Mark Jones, Rachel Bigsby and more will make speeches at Parliament Square Green about the badger cull and why they’re against it.
1.30 - 2pm join the mass lobby of MPs in Parliament
Between 1.30 and 2.00 pm, campaigners and supporters will enter Parliament for a mass lobby of MPs in the Central Lobby, House of Commons.