Chip in to help the Badgers!

Two bits of good news about our campaign to stop the badger cull: it’s been postponed until 2013. And after a motion in parliament, MPs voted 147 to 24 to abandon the cull altogether. Our campaign is working – but badgers aren’t safe just yet.

The government haven’t cancelled their plan to kill tens of thousands of badgers, they’ve just postponed the decision. Legally, they’re not bound by the vote and could still press on regardless.

There are powerful forces pushing for the cull to happen. The National Farming Union has said: “we must emphasise that the cull has been postponed and not cancelled. The culling licences are in place and the plan is to start next June.”

Luckily, badgers have people power in their corner, including more than 60,000 38 Degrees members who’ve made a stand against the cull. And we’ve got scientists and MPs backing us up – shooting badgers just doesn’t stack up as a real solution to tackling TB in cattle.

Even when the government seems hell-bent on a bad policy, people power can change their minds. And 38 Degrees members don’t only put a stop to bad ideas – we also keep up the pressure so they don’t sneak back once the fuss has died down. That’s what we did when the government was making plans for England’s forests again this year. We can do the same for the badger cull, too.

Clearly, we’ve still got work to do if we’re going to protect badgers for future generations. Can you chip in £2 or £3 a week? If enough of us chip in, we will raise the vital resources needed to stop the cull once and for all.

Click here to give a small amount to 38 Degrees each week:

I know I’m asking you to invest not only your money, but also your faith and trust in the 38 Degrees community and staff. I can promise you that the entire team is deeply committed to taking your donations as far as possible in the months to come.

38 Degrees doesn’t cost the earth to run, but it isn’t free. Funding can be a problem for organisations like us, and it’s sometimes difficult to plan ahead. We want to be independent, and we want to stand up to the rich and powerful – so we’ll never take money from big business or government. Expensive marketing campaigns and big fund-raising bureaucracies are an alternative, but we’d end up spending almost as much as we’d raise.

We’re doing our best to avoid all these pitfalls, and to stay lean, independent and focused on campaigning. We do this by asking you to chip in. A small weekly donation of £2 or £3 means we can plan ahead confidently. Although we’ve done enough together so far to make sure that no badgers have been shot in 2012, there’s been times when 38 Degrees members and staff wish that we could have done more.

Protecting our beautiful wild spaces – and the wildlife that thrives there – has been a priority for 38 Degrees members ever since we started campaigning together back in 2009. If enough people chip in a weekly contribution, we can plan confidently to make sure we’re still campaigning together in the future.