Crowdfunder | Help Stop DEFRA Plans to Extend Badger Culling
In August last year, The WoW project’s Charlie Moores made a trip out to Suffolk to record a podcast supporting protests against a proposal to build a new power station at Sizewell, adjoining two existing power stations Sizewell A and Sizewell B. The site lies in the heart of the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and right next to the RSPB’s flagship reserve at Minsmere.
Charlie spoke with a number of campaigners on the trip, one of whom was Tom Langton – a highly respected ecologist who has been involved in many different wildlife disputes including Sizewell, the Pont Valley in County Durham, and perhaps most notably, the government-backed mass killing of badgers (you can find a hard-hitting podcast with Tom recorded in June 2019 here).
Now Tom has launched a Crowdfunder which Mark Avery has backed, saying on his hugely influential blog that Tom is “a Badger expert and seasoned campaigner. His crowdfunder to challenge DEFRA on plans to extend the Badger cull deserves support – and I’ve put a few quid of my own in that direction.”
And so have we, Tom, so have we….
Tom also left a comment on Mark’s blog, which helps explain Tom’s motivation:
“Thank you Mark, it is absolutely fantastic that you and Wild Justice have become involved in questioning the legality of aspects of the badger culls in England [see here]. Thanks too for your personal support and message – it means a huge amount to all of us. My main interest is actually in trying, with others to help resolve the bovine tuberculosis crisis in farming. In doing so, to help farmers and cows as much as badgers to a more peaceful and sustainable future.
Having co-instigated a study of amphibian bacterial and viral disease with Froglife and the Institute of Zoology from the early 1990s, my major expert focus since 2016 has actually been the RBCT and the vagaries, uses and abuses of modelling in bovine TB studies.
Badger killing legal challenge has been a growing (near 24/7 now) distraction since 2016 from my giving ecological evidence and wildlife law support to local Friends of the Earth and small protest groups. People with desperate local wildlife defence battles in the New Forest, Forest of Dean, North Pennines and elsewhere. Places where rare damselflies, bats, snakes, newts, birds, often with badgers and their various habitats are under more destructive pressures and threat.
This has brought me in touch with very many wonderful people who remind you that there still is a chance of creative environmental change to benefit the vast majority. We have also now suddenly the monster of Sizewell C twin nuclear reactor construction, a ‘city for a decade’ with new 4-lane road across the Suffolk coast AoNB marshes next to Minsmere RSPB. Here there are plans to evict badgers and damage threatened rare birds and stunning aquatic invertebrate habitat.
Wild Justice has a real connection to seriously concerned people wanting our world to be a better place. Badger folk admire how Wild Justice has flourished in such a short space of time. All due to the patient logical build-up by an unstinting trio, who have been active for decades, now pooling resources to super-charge efforts for wildlife, people and proper rural livelihoods.
So a final thanks again for everything you are doing. Especially what you are doing for badgers & might be persuaded to do for some time to come, if it is needed – we can but hope!”