The Badger Crowd is a grassroots support and fundraising coalition including Badger Groups and Trusts around the UK, the public and a range of charities and funds. Ecologist Tom Langton has considerable experienced in nature conservation, legal challenge and disease research work and has fronted recent challenges as a part of and with support from ‘The Badger Crowd’.
An extended team of scientists and advisors surround this work, from microbiologists, pathologists, statisticians, population biologists, zoologists, ecologists, legal experts, lawyers, farmers and charity workers in the nature conservation and animal welfare sectors. Dominic Woodfield of the ecological consultancy Bioscan UK has provided expert witness evidence on ecological impact and assessment, including impacts on SSSI’s and designated international sites (SPA, SAC, RAMSAR) of nature conservation importance.
The Badger Crowd believes that legal challenges are an important fight, not just for the badger but also for the future of our countryside and the farming industry. The bovine TB badger cull policy is failing farmers, tax payers and our precious wildlife and is allowing the bTB epidemic to spread and to cause hardship and misery to a wide range of people across the country.
Since 2017 a tribunal against Natural England against unnecessary secrecy has been won, with Natural England described as being in breach of its duty by a High Court judge. A case against Supplementary Culling has been shown that it has no scientific basis and may cause unmeasurable harm. Challenges have exposed Defra for misleading the public during an ‘unimpressive’ public consultation. It has made promises that it cannot implement, concerning monitoring and learning from what it has decided to do to badgers. The policy is out of control. The Badger Crowd is here to try to stop the mistakes from continuing.