No words are necessary really, but when Wild Justice initiated their petition yesterday they hoped they might reach 10,000 signatures (which would trigger a response from the government) quite quickly.

Less than 24 hours later nearly 17,000 of us have signed.

Natural England Chair Tony Juniper (or ‘the former conservationist Tony Juniper’ as he is being referred to on social media) must be wondering what on earth he got himself into when he signed off on more badger killing to protect the dairy industry, poorly-thought out General Licences to protect shooting, and Hen Harrier brood meddling to – er, protect shooting…No doubt NE’s lobbyist chums at BASC and the NFU will tell him to ignore the ‘animal rights extremists’ who care about wildlife in ways that he would have once professed to understand (and even perhaps once shared) but it must be getting harder to ignore the pressures the public are bringing to bear on stopping the slaughter of our wildlife on behalf of industry…

If you’d ike to add your signature please click here.

• The Wild Justice website is at wildjustice.org.uk/
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