Badgers are being killed in their tens of thousands under a government policy designed to combat btb or bovine tuberculosis, a disease of cattle the greatest impact of which is perhaps that the meat from animals that test positive for btb can not be sold overseas. Infected cattle are invariably killed as well. While farmers are compensated for loss of income some feel that killing badgers is the only solution that they have to btb, pitting them against activists and wildlife lovers who are watching in horror as a protected animal is removed from an ever-growing area of countryside.

My name is Charlie Moores and I went down to the Somerset cull zone – coinciding unfortunately with the arrival of Hurricane Ophelia and its associated high winds – to talk with five of those activists and campaigners to get their perspective on the badger cull. I’ve taken the decision to not name the people I spoke with to protect them from possible repercussions – as we’ll hear tensions among some communities are running high and while the risks are probably minimal any risk is too high to take needlessly…

As you’ll hear the conversation starts outdoors, next to a small woodland owned by the Somerset Wildlife Trust and right on the boundary of one of the cull zones…

“…so many people would be horrified to know that reserves…are not protected under the cull – there is no absolutely safe haven for badgers anywhere now – because the amount of protected land [in the UK] is so minute… “

Various campaigners | Saving Somerset’s Badgers
October 2017

• Orginally uploaded to Lush Player October 2017