Badger Vote Results – Petition Launched

Last week we voted to decide whether or not to launch a campaign to stop the government’s plan to kill badgers.  The results are in – 87% of respondents said answered “Yes” to the question “Should we work together to stop government plans to kill badgers?”

There’s been a big debate among 38 Degrees members about badger culls. Some of us believe killing badgers would be wrong under any circumstances. Some of us believe that if the science really proved that shooting badgers could make a real dent in the cow TB problem, it would be a tragic necessity.

But 87% of us agree on this: the government’s current plans to shoot England’s badgers simply don’t stack up. The government’s own scientific advisers warn that it won’t solve the problem of TB in cattle, and could even make it worse.

Here are some comments from people who voted:

“Badgers are beautiful creatures that have hierarchical system in their groups. If we start shooting them at random, the infected ones will flee the area being targeted therefore spreading the disease further. We need to vaccinate in affected areas to help stamp out this disease. Farmers need better compensation and should be involved in helping to save one of Britain’s most amazing animals.”

“While I would reluctantly support the badger cull if I were convinced of its effectiveness, I can’t help but feel that the government has chosen the least expensive option rather than the best one.”

“Badgers are one of the only large indigenous mammals we have left in the UK. We need to prize them, not massacre them.”

“We should be looking at how we raise cattle and how to prevent this disease, not undertaking a knee jerk cull of a wild species on the basis of unproven scientific claims.  We have no right to try to eradicate a species and the ramifications of removing a link in the food chain are huge.  IT MUST NOT HAPPEN.”

Because so many of us want to work together to protect badgers, let’s get started by building a massive petition to tell the government to call off the cull.

You can sign the “stop the badger cull” petition here

UPDATE 1:

There’s been a bit of confusion about the badgers vote caused by a technical mistake that briefly directed people to the wrong “thanks for voting page”.

When the e-mail was first sent out, there were separate web pages to say “thanks for voting no” and “thanks for voting yes” which members should have landed on after voting as appropriate.  For a short time, people who voted “no” were wrongly directed to the “thanks for voting yes” page.

All these votes still registered as “no”, so the count was not affected. 

We quickly fixed the mistake and made it simpler so that all voters landed on a simple “Thanks” page.

Sorry for any confusion and please be assured that all votes registered properly as “yes” and “no” when clicked.