From Cheshire Hunt Sabs
In England – 34,717 badgers killed.
While our attention is understandably concerned with a pandemic of a zoonotic disease sweeping through the world, the government have decided to sneak out into the public domain the mortality figures of another zoonotic disease, although these figures are not from the victims of the disease itself, but from the scapegoat blamed for spreading it. Our badgers.
At the end of 2019 in Cheshire, 1666 badgers in 2 areas were killed by cull contractors Environment Clear, a company who’s former director Ian McGrath has recently been convicted of multiple counts of causing unnecessary suffering to his own animals and serious biosecurity breaches.
In addition, 2 more areas in Cheshire saw badgers killed as part of the Lv1000 contractors Staffordshire zone and the PJRN contractor which covered parts of Staffs and Shropshire along with Cheshire. Their kill totals were 1611 and 1660 respectively.
In England as a whole, 34,717 badgers were shot dead in the autumn of 2019. The majority killed by frees hooting, a method deemed inhumane even by organisations who supported the cull such as the BVA, as evidenced by the heartbreaking audio recording of the length of time a shot badger cries in agony until it’s death. If you can bear to listen and judge how humane free shooting is for yourself, the link to the audio is below.
If we look at a rough breakdown of the figures for England as a whole, taking the cull as an average duration of 6 weeks without the extensions which happened in some areas and not including the yet to be released figures of the supplementary zones, that’s:
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- 34,717 deaths over 6 weeks
- 5,786 per week
- 827 per day
- 34 per hour
And one dead badger every 1 minute 8 seconds.
We know that people are rightly concerned with their own health and mortality at this time, but let’s still speak up for the lives of other inhabitants of planet earth who don’t have a voice and take a minute to remember those lives already lost.
Stay safe and well everybody.