In the ten years between 2013–2023, roughly a quarter of a million badgers were killed at the behest of the UK government by either free shooting or cage trapping and shooting. A particularly brutal method of murder — free shooting — can cause these sentient animals a great deal of excruciating pain before they are put out of their misery. Of the badgers killed in 2020, 77% had their lives ended in this way.
The Independent Expert Panel (IEP), formed by the UK government in order to monitor the ‘humaneness’ of their brutal badger cull, found that given the length of time it may take for the animal to die this method could not be described as ‘ethical’. In 2013, the first year of the cull, between 6.4% to 18% of the animals shot took more than five minutes to die, their eventual end coming from either multiple organ failure or severe blood loss. The IEP has since been disbanded by the government, unfortunately preventing any further oversight into the cull, though the free shooting approach remains as common as ever.
The reasoning behind why these iconic black and white striped creatures are gunned down in their tens of thousands is because of a misguided, deeply flawed belief parroted by governmental bodies like the Department for Food, Environment, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), who posit that the badgers are causing mass infections of bovine Tuberculosis (bTB), an infectious respiratory disease primarily spread through cattle-to-cattle contact. The disease costs those who farm cattle many millions per year through loss of sellable meat and dairy.
The rifeness of bTB is accurate. In 2023 just over 20,000 cows were slaughtered in the UK because of the disease. However, the belief that badgers are the main source responsible for causing outbreaks of bTB all over the countryside is simply false, and has been known for many years.
Bovine TB is common and likely always present in the environment. It can be carried harmlessly by many species, from mice to deer. Among UK herds, 94% of cattle infections are as a result of bTB being spread between cow-to-cow transmission. The badger has wrongly been used as a scapegoat by many in the farming community, despite a plethora of research carried out by independent investigators, wildlife organisations, and vets challenging this rationale.
A 2022 study published in Vet Record used DEFRA’s own data to show clearly that there is no evidence that the mass culling of badgers has had any effect on rates of bTB in cattle. Comparing both cull and non-cull areas, the study highlighted that any reductions seen in bTB were likely due to cattle measures alone. One major help in the fight against bTB would be the introduction of a cattle vaccine, but this is not something the UK government has approved for use, despite research showing that such a vaccine could reduce spread of the disease by up to 89% in dairy herds.
To further highlight the ineptitude of the government's cull policy, only 900 of over 102,000 badgers slaughtered under cull licences between 2013–2019 were tested post-mortem for bTB. Of those 900, fewer than 5% had significant markers indicating they could spread bovine TB to other badgers and, potentially, to cattle. Scaled up, that equates to somewhere in the region of 91,000 to 96,000 badgers massacred for absolutely no reason. Bearing in mind the IEP’s percentage of badgers who do not die upon the bullet’s impact, this leaves us with potentially tens of thousands of defenceless animals painfully crawling around in the undergrowth with shattered bones and gaping wounds — gasping the final panicked breaths of an unfairly persecuted life through blood-soaked fur, waiting for their organs to shut down, one after another. All because of a categorically false belief that they pose a threat to the cattle farmer’s profits.
Considering an investigation carried out by wildlife organisation Protect The Wild in 2022 captured footage of dozens of supposedly disease-ridden dead badgers left in an open-air skip for multiple weeks, allowing easy access for any animals to feed on the carcasses and therefore spread bTB further, the public can be confidently certain that the cull is — at its root — not a worthy cause, dedicated to eradicating a potentially dangerous disease — it is wildlife hatred and human-driven entitlement, plain and simple.
The organisation went on to state: ‘The videos taken in September and early October show the grotesque reality of the badger cull. A cull in which the government claims to only licence operators with the highest biosecurity measures in place […] We would not be at all surprised if these scenes of recklessness and non-adherence to important regulations are commonplace across the UK.’
Aside from the blatant animal rights issue the cull presents, there is also the much needed discussion around what the cull costs to the taxpaying public. Not to mention the pertinent issue the UK is experiencing of a general loss of wildlife which the cull is only emphasising.
Though those in Parliament would like to claim the culling will have little cost burden on the public purse, the opposite has been true, with Badger Trust estimating that the policy has cost somewhere in the region of 60 million pounds of public funds, taking into account the cost of administration, training, equipment, monitoring, policing and legal defence costs. It should be noted that this estimation is a conservative one, as it only covers the years between 2013–2019 — it is also not a comprehensive overview of the full financial situation, as DEFRA has refused to disclose a number of significant costs under a Freedom Of Information request (for example, DEFRA will not disclose the costs of three full-time staff teams working in their own organisation and also within Animal & Plant Health Agency, and Natural England).
And in terms of nature depletion, badgers are being culled to the brink of extinction in certain parts of England — with up to 90% of their population targeted in designated areas. There is no upper limit in regions which are deemed to be ‘low-risk’. With the recent State of Nature report showing that the UK is one of the most nature depleted areas in the world, what will it take for those in power to realise these senseless acts of wildlife violence are only heightening the problem?
The North of Ireland is the worst hit region of the UK, showing a massive 43% drop in birds usually found on farmland since 1996. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds NI has carried out research noting that since bird flu has been running rife throughout the region since 2021, it has caused further dramatic drop offs in some already endangered seabird populations (upwards of a 29% decline the red-listed kittiwake and, in the case of the common tern, which is not currently thought to be endangered, 47%).
Many organisations have been calling for a halt to the release of game birds for shooting due to the dangers this poses to wild bird populations already at risk of succumbing to the effects of avian flu. Multiple outbreaks have already occurred since 2021 on premises that raise game birds. Each year roughly 55 million pheasants and red-legged partridges, along with two-and-a-half million mallard ducks will be released into the countryside in order for hunters to shoot them for what they see as ‘sport’.
Before the animals are set loose they can be moved from farms to ‘holding’ or ‘release’ pens, which are often unroofed, raising the chances of interactions with wild birds which can put them at risk of bird flu.
Yet the heightened risk of what is an incredibly serious virus further spreading among the natural avian population has not made those in power take a definitive stand against such practises.
It is also worth pointing out that avian flu (or, more specifically, H5N1 — the strain of bird flu that is becoming increasingly common in wild bird populations) poses a worryingly high risk to humans when it spills over, with a mortality rate of more than 50% due to our species having no natural immunity to the virus. As of early 2024, the strain has spread within several mammalian species, most notably U.S cattle, raising the likelihood of it taking hold among humans.
Discover Northern Ireland, the region's largest tourist board, still promotes shooting as a way to get those interested in blood sports to visit the country. It describes the Dunteige Shoot in picturesque terms, like it’s a good day out for the whole family, calling it: ‘[A] perfect setting for presenting high fast challenging birds over the awaiting guns, the drives are laid out to make the most of the contour of the land consisting of river valleys, open hill ground and woodland drives.’
As an article on Friends of the Earth states:
‘The UK is a hostile environment for wildlife […] Why isn’t the media holding politicians to account with questions such as, “Why is nature in the UK still declining on your watch?” or, “How do your weak and ineffectual plans match the scale of the problem?”’
We could also add ‘Why do we feel entitled to gun down innocent animals for fun?’ and ‘Why does unnecessary animal suffering come secondary to the propping up of capitalism?’ to that list.
Another UK land mammal, the fox, regularly faces its own (un)fair share of terrorism at the hands of the empathetically bankrupt. And this terrorism goes all the way to the ‘top’ of UK society, further normalising the violence.
The so-called royal family is, by some metrics, the biggest active hunting organisation within the UK that is still operating with impunity. Since the early 2000s, there have been 18 cases involving suspected wildlife offences, including the mis-use of poisons and killings of endangered birds of prey, committed on land owned by the family. UK law prevents the royals from being investigated properly, as police are not allowed to enter the King’s estates without his direct permission, so no charges or further meaningful investigations are ever likely to come.
It should come as no surprise to learn that a family which built their reign on the backs of those they enslaved and colonised take pride and play an active role in hunting for pleasure.
Even Harry, who has taken some effort to distance himself from his family in recent years, writes of a “swelling pride” at having killed a stag with a single shot through the heart in his latest book.
Freedom of Information requests by Animal Aid found that: ‘[M]ore than 7,000 mammals and birds were murdered on Royal land in one year. Among that number, thousands of foxes and corvids were killed in order to protect the estate’s pheasants from predators. The pheasants are, of course, murdered for fun by royal shooters and their friends.’ All on land gifted to them from by the taxpaying public.
Speaking about Kate Middleton in 2018, a source inside the Monarchy said: ‘She frequently goes out shooting when she is staying at Anmer Hall and has become a really good shot. She is very much into the hunting, shooting and fishing country lifestyle. [Her] 20-gauge smooth bore gun is ideal for shooting game birds.’
William and Kate have previously flaunted their grotesque privilege and feelings of ugly entitlement over nature by hiring a hunter to pump a myriad of shotgun pellets into the face and body of an animal not much bigger than a well-fed house cat. The vixen’s crime? She had been using their garden as a Royal Toilet. Of the incident, the hunter said: ‘They didn’t want the children running around on the grass with fox mess all over it. You can’t blame them.’
Though banned in 2005, fox hunting and the wider persecution of the animal remains a mostly normalised and prevalent pastime in much of the UK countryside. Typically it will take place under the guise of ‘trail-hunting’, meaning a pre-laid scent trail of fox urine will be put down for the hounds to follow in what is sometimes referred to as a ‘sham hunt.’ If the hunting groups are to be believed, and their hounds truly stick to pre-laid scent trails and pre-laid scent trails only — then, for some strange reason, they appear to have been laid across main roads, railway lines, or (interestingly enough) through areas where fox populations are known to frequent.
The reality of trail hunting is clear. It’s nothing more than an invention the hunting groups came up with in 2005 in order to maintain what they feel is their given right to terrorise wildlife while they attempt to repeal the Act.
Although hunting for survival is necessary and something done by those with the least amount of power in our society, hunting for the thrill of it is almost exclusively a hobby undertaken by those in the upper classes, as is shown in the case of the royal family.
‘[C]hasing wild animals on thoroughbreds at a time when many rural people couldn’t afford to eat properly became deeply embedded into the culture of some hugely wealthy landowners and aristocrats,’ writes Charlie Moores on Protect The Wild. ‘The hunt morphed into a social occasion to flaunt connections, wealth, and influence.
‘Foxhunters were people whose everyday experiences were of privilege, of never being told “no”, of untouchability … [the lives] of the fox hunting elite didn’t change all that much over the years. They still went to Eton or Gordonstoun, still had a powerful presence in the House of Lords, the judiciary, and industry, and still had enormous influence in rural areas (owning many of the major local businesses) seeing themselves as the only people who really understood how the countryside worked and how it should be controlled.’
This entitled mindset is as pervasive now as it has been in decades gone by, even when ethics or scientific fact is brought into the conversation many hunters feel it is their God given right to hunt these helpless creatures.
No other UK mammal divides opinion as much as the fox. Many British farmers are in favour of fox hunting, in particular because of a misguided belief that they have an impact on the animals they farm. The ‘fox in the chicken coop’ fear can easily be allayed by implementing secure electric fencing. Claims that some sheep farmers make about foxes eating their lambs, causing a loss of profit, are unfounded. In reality, bad farming practises and cold weather are a greater threat to lambs. A 2000 report by the Scottish government found that less than 1% of lamb deaths can be attributed to fox predation. But even if foxes did cause a drastic loss of finances to the sheep farmers of the UK, this would still not be a justification to put them through the torment they receive on a weekly basis by the hunting groups.
Hounds that catch the scent of a fox may chase her for hours. The terrified animal flees and attempts to hide wherever she can, though many times she will be ‘flushed out’ of any hiding spots by huntsmen forcing their smaller terrier dogs down into the hole to get her out; sometimes the hunters will dig the fox out if the terriers prove unsuccessful.
This blatant disregard and contempt for wildlife raises many issues. Whether viewed through the lens of animal rights, economics, or public health — it’s clear that we’re on a downward spiral and that our treatment of nature is fundamentally not sustainable. If we continue to put pressure on our remaining green spaces and wildlife, pushing species to the brink of extinction — or worse, total extinction, potentially towards a tipping point for biodiversity loss; or if a new, horrifically deadly virus that we have no natural immunity from spills over into humanity; or if the prioritisation of global capitalism over all eventually cannibalises us — at some point, nature will bite back.
