Calling all UK Residents: Save the Badgers!

At the risk of sounding like a hippie, I want to talk about nature for five minutes. Specifically: badgers. You know, the dog-sized, stripy creatures that sometimes walk with sticks and hang out when it’s dark. Sometimes they hang out in people’s gardens, eating peanuts and sounding like live hoovers:

Unfortunately, they are also in serious danger: the UK government is planning on a badger cull to prevent them spreading TB to cattle in various parts of England, even though it is unlikely that decimating a large portion of the species will do anything except decimate a large portion of the species. My understanding of badger-life isn’t great, but I do know that cutting out part of food chain will seriously affect ecosystems, which is a really bad thing. A cull would not actually stop the spread of TB to cattle anyway, it would just slow it down because nearly three-quarters of the badger population, in some areas, would disappear for years. Thankfully, lots of people agree with me. People like my uncle, who shot the above video, some scientists advising the government and the 24,000 people who signed an online petition. Which, if you are a resident of the UK, you can sign. Please do. I have had the pleasure of watching a badger out and about in real life – as in, about eight feet away, in my uncle’s garden. They are very interesting animals and since the option of vaccinating them against TB is a far better long-term solution than shooting them, I highly recommend you become a hippie for five minutes too.

The bloke that started that petition, by the way, knows what he’s talking about. He’s technically a doctor of astrophysics, but he’s also an animal rights campaigner, CBE and rockstar.