Two badgers who starred in a wildly popular BBC show could be slaughtered by marksmen currently carrying out a badger cull in England's county of Somerset.
Bumblebee and Gnat are orphaned badgers who were taken in to a rescue center in the south west of England, and ultimately starred in "Hugh's Wild West," a show watched by millions and presented by chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.
At the end of the show, the two adorable badgers were released back into the wild, always the goal of the rescue center.
But Somerset, the site of their release, has now become one of the counties where badger culls are being carried out: that's because, according to government officials, badgers are responsible for infecting cows with TB and therefore must be killed.
Please sign my petition demanding an end to these cruel and ineffective badger culls.
Scientists and animal rights activists disagree and see little or no evidence to support the use of culls.
Almost 20,000 badgers were killed in 2017, a big jump from the 10,000 that died in 2016. The culls were largely in the southwest of England with the county of Devon having six culls, and Somerset having three each.
But killing those cute badgers doesn't seem to have affected the rate of bovine tuberculosis (bTB): The number of badgers culled rose from 615 animals in 2014 to almost 20,000 in 2017, but the number of cattle who died as a result of bTB increased from 27,474 to 42,000 as the disease continued to spread.
Please sign my petition demanding an end to these cruel and ineffective badger culls.
