‘Team Badger’ coalition of organisations, includes the RSPCA, IFAW, Network for Animals, Save Me, the League Against Cruel Sports ,Humane Society International, Blue Badger and many, many more against the badger cull. A huge billboard featuring animal welfare organisations against the badger cull is featured on the Cromwell Road in central london to raise public awareness about the imminent badger cull.
Please visit www.teambadger.org and sign the petition against the cull . We need 100,000 signatures urgently. – http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/38257
Brian May is featured in the photograph next to the Co Founder of Blue Badger, The Blue Fox, and A Close Season For Hares campaigns.
On Wednesday 19th September, Queen guitarist and animal welfare champion, Brian May, shoulder-to-shoulder with the heads of every major animal welfare group, launched the Team Badger campaign in London with a giant billboard poster on Cromwell Road, at one of the capital’s busiest junctions.
The Team Badger campaign is an unprecedented coalition of the UK’s leading animal welfare organisations, including the Save Me, International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), Network for Animals, Political Animal Lobby, Badger Trust, The league, Born Free Foundation, Humane Society International, David Shepherd Wildlife Trust, Animals Aid, VIVA, Care for the Wild International, Stroud 100, Gloucestershire Against the Cull, Blue Badger-( by Conservatives Against Fox Hunting) PETA and RETHINK bovine TB, who have all united against the Government’s imminent cull of badgers in England, which it is undertaking in an attempt to address Bovine TB in cattle.
The Cromwell Road billboard marks the start of a coordinated campaign to stop the planned cull of badgers in England, with the aim of raising public awareness and collecting signatures on a government petition to force a debate in parliament.
Brian May, who set up Save Me in 2010 to campaign on animal welfare issues in the UK said, “We’re not going to let this drop. The most powerful animal organisations in the UK have united to oppose this inhumane and misguided cull of badgers. It’s scientifically, practically, and ethically indefensible and it is against the wishes of the majority of people of this country.
“This cull will not solve the farmers’ problem; it must be abandoned in favour of vaccination – which is the only long-term hope for eradicating bovine TB.
“This billboard is the tip of the iceberg. We won’t rest until every man, woman and child in Britain knows about the tragedy unfolding in their countryside, and the Government realises it is making a terrible mistake.”
The billboard features a painting of a badger called Hope – created by Pat Willliams, of the Badger Trust.
Brian May and Save Me chief executive Anne Brummer also collaborate on Harper Asprey Wildlife Rescue, in Surrey, which has rescued thousands of injured, sick, and orphaned animals in the last few years, returning them to the wild for a second chance.
The consortium of Charities has started a new petition on the Government’s own website – titled ‘Stop the Badger Cull’. The portal for those wishing to sign the petition is at teambadger.org
“Our message is simple”, said May, “Don’t let this happen. Sign the petition. Let your MP know you are opposed. The badger is an iconic symbol of our British wildlife. And every single individual is an intelligent sentient being, part of a family, and with feelings very much like ours. Badgers have been living in the British Isles since thousands of years before Man arrived. Let’s not be the generation that stood by and watched them be slaughtered. Save the Badgers for their own sake, and for the world our grandchildren will inherit.”
Brian May added that his personal commitment to solving the Bovine TB problem remains intact. “I personally, along with the RSPCA, have now made arrangements to visit our representatives in the European Parliament next month, to present our case to be allowed to vaccinate cows. I invite the NFU to join us, to confirm that at least they, if not the Government, are serious about the long-term ERADICATION of this disease from Britain, rather than a piece of window-dressing, designed to convince farmers that ‘Something is Being Done’, which will have virtually no effect, other than to alienate farmers from the British Public.”
