Badger Campaign 2007

New Badger Campaign has now been launched in South Wales!!!

On 28th October, Naturewatch launched the next phase of its Badger campaign.  Naturewatch and Crimestoppers have joined forces to tackle badger crime in the Cynon Valley area, appealing to the residents to phone Crimestoppers if they are aware of anything suspicious in regards to badger cruelty.

The Cynon Valle in South Wales has been completely saturated with posters and flyers, over 20 celebrities have come on board and the local MP, Ann Clwyd, is offering her full and active support.  Not to mention the media attention!  Our campaign was subject of a Crimestoppers Appeal on ITV Wales on Sunday 28th October after the main evening news, and, the local newspaper, The Cynon Valley Leader, will be publishing a full page advertorial on the 1st November.  We’ve sent out many press releases, so this will just be the start!

 Plans to tackle badger crime from a fresh angle

Background

Briefly, several years ago Natuewatch funded badger experts to undertake covert surveillance activities in West Wales, where badger cruelty is rife, in order to identify some of these criminals and bring them to justice. This project was carried out with the co-operation of local police wildlife crime officers and had the support of the RSPCA. However, due to a number of difficulties encountered during the course of the project, this initiative was brought to a close and the campaign evolved into a lobbying campaign aimed at persuading the Government to make badger cruelty offences notifiable thereby making it a policing priority.

The results of two surveys carried out by Naturewatch with Police Wildlife Crime Officers prove that it is frequently demonstrated that the individuals responsible for persecuting badgers are also involved in other criminal activity such as drugs, violence, theft and firearms. At present, police forces are not encouraged to take badger crime seriously which often results in a reduced effectiveness in tackling other types of criminal activity. Therefore, by making badger cruelty a policing priority, the police will also be tackling other serious crime.

New Campaign

In the spring, Naturewatch met with Vernon Coaker (Home Office minister), when it was confirmed that the Home Office would be unable to allocate any resources into revising the way in which badger crime is recorded in the foreseeable future, due to its need to concentrate on areas where it is currently receiving much criticism.

However, during the meeting several options to progress this campaign were discussed and a new strategy agreed. The way forward being to tackle badger cruelty from a fresh angle; to educate the public about badger diggers/baiters and offer them a service to anonymously inform us, or Crimestoppers, about anybody they suspect of being involved. All calls will be logged and at the end of the project the information received will be presented to the Home Office to illustrate how serious this crime is - the figures will speak for themselves!

This intelligence will undoubtedly lead to an increase in the number of successful prosecutions as, currently, it's very disappointing how few badger cruelty cases are reaching the courts despite the huge number of badgers that are being killed illegally each year.

Naturewatch plans to completely saturate a carefully selected area with posters and leaflets describing a typical badger baiter; behaviour and profile. We also plan to engage local newspapers and radio stations with publicising this campaign to encourage residents within the chosen area to anonymously call Crimestoppers with their suspicions and Naturewatch will give a monetary reward for each successful prosecution.

At the time of writing (June 07) we are in the planning stage, however, we hope to be in a position to return to the Home Office with enlightened statistics before the end of the year. For obvious reasons, we are unable to disclose full information about the project but will do so once it's been officially launched.

WARNING - the following images may shock. If the law on badger protection was working, they would never have been taken. Please view with caution. Click here.

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