Badgers have lived peacefully in the British countryside for thousands of years and are one of our most charismatic and important mammals. Badgers have been widely persecuted by people, with badger baiting once commonplace, they are now rightly protected by law but now face the biggest threat to their survival. Under the guise of tackling the problem of tuberculosis in cattle (bTB), the government have licensed a massive cull of badgers. Currently under way in Somerset and Gloucestershire, with Dorset as the reserve zone, the aim is to kill 70% of the badgers in these areas. If this wasn’t bad enough, figures for the number of badgers in each area differ greatly, and there is no way of telling how many wounded badgers will die slowly underground and out of sight. So there is a very real chance that in some areas ALL of the badgers will be wiped out.