With the prospect of yet more areas being opened up to the cruel and unscientific badger culls this year, badger groups are wondering how they can encourage more people to come out on patrol during the culls.

The many thousands of people who support badgers, do the marches and sign petitions, does not translate into thousands of ‘boots on the ground’. Why?

Perhaps people don’t understand quite what patrolling to protect badgers involves. They’ve read the horror stories on social media, think it’s all in the dark and facing threatening men with guns – scary stuff. Some of it can be, but it’s mostly walking, endless walking.

People walk during the day, on lanes and public rights of way, noting any signs of preparation for night-time killing, spotting cage-traps being transported or locating bait points. These are peanuts hidden under flat stones or turf. Badgers find them and stay to eat, making a nice easy target for a gun.

Others walk in the late afternoon, locating cage-traps that have been set ready for the night and passing the information on to others who remove the traps (borderline legal) or damage them (illegal and not part of patrolling).

Or there’s the very early morning walk, finding cages with badgers inside before the cullers come back to shoot them. It is quite legal to release these badgers if you believe the badger is ‘distressed’.

Meeting threats and idiocy with polite reserve

And yes, patrols go out at night, being as visible as possible on rights of way, deterring any shooters, reporting shots heard to those less visible, who can go in and move the cullers on. There are times when patrols are faced with abusive behaviour, but one’s never alone, as this patroller relates:

“We had all but finished a patrol and were walking, with bright torches and wearing hi-vis, back to the car. As we passed this particular farm, the owners and passengers ‘happened’ to arrive home in their car. They passed us then slowed the car down to almost stopped, turned hard and drove at us at some considerable speed, stopping just a few inches away from us. We ignored it and carried on walking.

“We then got the usual ‘Are you lost?’ routine. We said ‘No’ and walked on while they all fell about laughing. However, on spotting Tony’s body cam they soon became apologetic and claimed they hadn’t seen us!

“A few minutes later we were approached by a Land Rover. Prepared for another round of stupidity, we were really pleased to find it was Kernow (Cornwall) sabs who’d seen the whole thing from their high vantage point and had come to check we were OK.

“It was awesome to realise that whatever we may encounter, we’ve got a fantastic team behind us who are all watching each other’s backs.”

Because guns are involved, police are always in the area. Some policing is poor, some good and helpful. Not everyone trusts them, but they have a duty to protect and, as seen above, can and will intervene when necessary.

If you decide to take part, remember this: barring violence and criminal damage which are not part of badger patrols, patrollers have a legal right to go where they go and do what they do. Some police are gradually learning to support patrollers in that.

Equipment, travel and rest

Some equipment is essential. Apart from the obvious warm clothing, waterproofs, boots, high-visibility jackets, torches with spare batteries, maps, compasses, cameras and mobile phones with a GPS facility, one should add, if possible, dashboard and body cameras to record any incidents.

Night vision binoculars are helpful and thermal imagers would be a great aid, but are horrendously expensive unless you’re funded by the taxpayer, which patrollers aren’t.

People come from far away. Two volunteers, faithfully driving miles on several nights and trying to balance environmental concerns (carbon emissions v badgers) commented: “We saw badgers, barn and tawny owls, and an eruption of toads … our very visible presence helped to keep alive the local and national debate around the cull, challenge the cull and look after individual badgers.”

The Isle of Wight’s badger group sent people to help Dorset. One young man came by ferry across the Channel and hitched down to Somerset, plannning to stay for the duration. Somerset sent him on to Cornwall, which was experiencing its first year of culling and desperately needed help.

Some people stay at the Camp Badger sites set up by local hunt saboteurs, and some lucky folk get real beds and loving care:

“When the call came out for places to accommodate people coming to help save badgers, I offered up our B&B so they could have somewhere dry and warm to stay. The people we have hosted have been lovely, kind and passionate; their stories have been amazing and given me a glimpse into the world of the front-line wildlife campaigner. Their relief, after a long night of activity, at being able to slump in a hot bath and a cosy bed was priceless.”

Nature as you’ve never seen it before – beautiful, but marred by the horror of culling.

“Looking over a Dorset landscape by day, or under a starlight sky, is deeply moving. But when on patrol the experience is instantly marred by the thought of what is happening out there. That almost unbearable feeling, however, is partially eased by the knowledge that we are there trying to do something about it.

“We retraced our steps and saw headlights coming towards us. An open truck with three young men swaggering upright in the back wielding guns, gleefully informed us they were out culling. It was very strange to be among such beauty while being subjected to the horror and the reality of the killing fields. The beauty and the beast are alive in our woods but this is no fairy tale.”

“Standing on one of the county’s massive hillforts, high above the surrounding land, one can only guess at the landscape below. In the dark all that is invisible. But we are, standing high and shining our torches down onto the farms below, a message writen on the sky – badger protectors are here. From some miles away we are seen. Another patrol drives up, coming to check who’s on the hill. A greeting, a chat and they are off again, racing to a farm down below, while we go on walking and shining our torches.”

Walking through ancient woodland at night is a wonderland, torches playing over massive knarled trunks and branches towering against a moonlit sky – not to be missed. And regardless of the fact that the woods are full of badgers and therefore surrounded by gunmen, one person said, “I always feel safe when I’m in a wood.”

The highs and the lows

While the culls last the pressure is relentless. Going out every day or night, or both, getting lost, getting stuck in mud, mile after mile of endless trudging, driving home and falling, bone-weary, into bed. Where one lies awake, worrying about how many badgers survived to live another day. It is not surprising that many people collapse after it’s over, prey to whatever bugs are doing the rounds.

One patroller wrote, “Currently running on a mixture of exhaustion, relief, anger and frustration here – I expect you feel the same.” But she added, “I shall always go on remembering the fantastic friendships formed, strangers that have become good friends, who share the same values and that you can absolutely rely on.”

And this is true for everyone. No one walks alone. The companionship, the bonds formed and the trust built between us makes for more courage than people thought they had, for determination to keep going and to calmly face the occasional bursts of stupid nastiness from farmers and cullers.

There’s laughter too: “What made me laugh? Stopping for a pee and wondering who was watching with night vision! And sitting in the pouring rain on a soggy bale of hay with friends about midnight in the middle of nowhere and thinking what a sight we must look. My sleeping-bag-suit always made people laugh!”

A high point? “My first patrol on a moonlit night, clambering over ancient styles, each one different in its form and antiquity. I felt like a dog with an extremely arthritic hip at the end.”

And the low points? “Our cars blocked in by shooters in the woods, rescued by M and the police. The shock of finding a shooting tower and peanuts illegally planted right next to a badger sett.

“Being horrified at the threatening behaviour of two farming women. One tried to stop us on the public footpath, demanding to know which walking group we were with. The other shone the lights of her 4×4 in our faces, till we told her we were legally on a public footpath, when she replied ‘Oh, I was just worried about you, my cows are in that field and might frighten you’.”

Nowt so queer as folk …

It is amazing how little imagination pro-cull farmers display – swear words spat out of vehicle windows as they drive past, or stopping and asking “Are you lost?”, “Are you happy?”, “Do you enjoy walking in the dark?”, or “I don’t want my cows to frighten you.” That last is sometimes “I don’t want you to frighten my cows”, when the cows are in the next field or may not be there at all…

One farmer drove up to a patrol walking across a field. “Don’t want you to go in that field, I have cows there”, indicating the next field. Patrollers said they weren’t going there. “Because a day or two ago I found a dead calf there”, implying it was the patrollers what done it. A pause. “I found it last week.” Pause, mumble, mumble, “Well, maybe two weeks ago.”

Whatever challenges patrollers might face, it won’t be pro-culler intelligence. Whatever footpaths patrollers are using, they often go by or through farmyards and walkers see at firsthand the dirty disease-ridden state of many farms. This patroller reported all he had seen the authorities:

“One farmyard was completely covered in slurry (which can support bovine TB bacilli for many months). This farm is currently locked down with bTB. The farmer in question took part in the badger cull.

“On a neighbouring farm I found two newly dead roe deer, each left to rot in a field supporting dairy cattle. This farmer also took part in the badger cull. I could go on about dead sheep left to rot, dead stock thrown over a fence into scrub, or piles of farm bio-hazard waste dumped on a public footpath …

“If farmers want to be taken seriously when they profess to be fighting bTB, they have a mountain of work to do to get their own house in order before they blame the humble badger.”

And finally … the absolute high that keeps people going

“Having stopped the shooting and made the guns leave, we drive back home tired out and longing for bed, when we see the best thing of all – badgers setting out on their own night-time patrols.”

Will you join the badger patrols this year? Why not contact your local badger group and find out if they run training days. Many badger patrol groups have their own pages on Facebook.

Lesley Docksey is a freelance writer who writes for The Ecologist and other media on the badger cull and other environmental topics, and on political issues for UK and international websites. 

With the prospect of yet more areas being opened up to the cruel and unscientific badger culls this year, badger groups are wondering how they can encourage more people to come out on patrol during the culls.

The many thousands of people who support badgers, do the marches and sign petitions, does not translate into thousands of ‘boots on the ground’. Why?

Perhaps people don’t understand quite what patrolling to protect badgers involves. They’ve read the horror stories on social media, think it’s all in the dark and facing threatening men with guns – scary stuff. Some of it can be, but it’s mostly walking, endless walking.

People walk during the day, on lanes and public rights of way, noting any signs of preparation for night-time killing, spotting cage-traps being transported or locating bait points. These are peanuts hidden under flat stones or turf. Badgers find them and stay to eat, making a nice easy target for a gun.

Others walk in the late afternoon, locating cage-traps that have been set ready for the night and passing the information on to others who remove the traps (borderline legal) or damage them (illegal and not part of patrolling).

Or there’s the very early morning walk, finding cages with badgers inside before the cullers come back to shoot them. It is quite legal to release these badgers if you believe the badger is ‘distressed’.

Meeting threats and idiocy with polite reserve

And yes, patrols go out at night, being as visible as possible on rights of way, deterring any shooters, reporting shots heard to those less visible, who can go in and move the cullers on. There are times when patrols are faced with abusive behaviour, but one’s never alone, as this patroller relates:

“We had all but finished a patrol and were walking, with bright torches and wearing hi-vis, back to the car. As we passed this particular farm, the owners and passengers ‘happened’ to arrive home in their car. They passed us then slowed the car down to almost stopped, turned hard and drove at us at some considerable speed, stopping just a few inches away from us. We ignored it and carried on walking.

“We then got the usual ‘Are you lost?’ routine. We said ‘No’ and walked on while they all fell about laughing. However, on spotting Tony’s body cam they soon became apologetic and claimed they hadn’t seen us!

“A few minutes later we were approached by a Land Rover. Prepared for another round of stupidity, we were really pleased to find it was Kernow (Cornwall) sabs who’d seen the whole thing from their high vantage point and had come to check we were OK.

“It was awesome to realise that whatever we may encounter, we’ve got a fantastic team behind us who are all watching each other’s backs.”

Because guns are involved, police are always in the area. Some policing is poor, some good and helpful. Not everyone trusts them, but they have a duty to protect and, as seen above, can and will intervene when necessary.

If you decide to take part, remember this: barring violence and criminal damage which are not part of badger patrols, patrollers have a legal right to go where they go and do what they do. Some police are gradually learning to support patrollers in that.

Equipment, travel and rest

Some equipment is essential. Apart from the obvious warm clothing, waterproofs, boots, high-visibility jackets, torches with spare batteries, maps, compasses, cameras and mobile phones with a GPS facility, one should add, if possible, dashboard and body cameras to record any incidents.

Night vision binoculars are helpful and thermal imagers would be a great aid, but are horrendously expensive unless you’re funded by the taxpayer, which patrollers aren’t.

People come from far away. Two volunteers, faithfully driving miles on several nights and trying to balance environmental concerns (carbon emissions v badgers) commented: “We saw badgers, barn and tawny owls, and an eruption of toads … our very visible presence helped to keep alive the local and national debate around the cull, challenge the cull and look after individual badgers.”

The Isle of Wight’s badger group sent people to help Dorset. One young man came by ferry across the Channel and hitched down to Somerset, plannning to stay for the duration. Somerset sent him on to Cornwall, which was experiencing its first year of culling and desperately needed help.

Some people stay at the Camp Badger sites set up by local hunt saboteurs, and some lucky folk get real beds and loving care:

“When the call came out for places to accommodate people coming to help save badgers, I offered up our B&B so they could have somewhere dry and warm to stay. The people we have hosted have been lovely, kind and passionate; their stories have been amazing and given me a glimpse into the world of the front-line wildlife campaigner. Their relief, after a long night of activity, at being able to slump in a hot bath and a cosy bed was priceless.”

Nature as you’ve never seen it before – beautiful, but marred by the horror of culling.

“Looking over a Dorset landscape by day, or under a starlight sky, is deeply moving. But when on patrol the experience is instantly marred by the thought of what is happening out there. That almost unbearable feeling, however, is partially eased by the knowledge that we are there trying to do something about it.

“We retraced our steps and saw headlights coming towards us. An open truck with three young men swaggering upright in the back wielding guns, gleefully informed us they were out culling. It was very strange to be among such beauty while being subjected to the horror and the reality of the killing fields. The beauty and the beast are alive in our woods but this is no fairy tale.”

“Standing on one of the county’s massive hillforts, high above the surrounding land, one can only guess at the landscape below. In the dark all that is invisible. But we are, standing high and shining our torches down onto the farms below, a message writen on the sky – badger protectors are here. From some miles away we are seen. Another patrol drives up, coming to check who’s on the hill. A greeting, a chat and they are off again, racing to a farm down below, while we go on walking and shining our torches.”

Walking through ancient woodland at night is a wonderland, torches playing over massive knarled trunks and branches towering against a moonlit sky – not to be missed. And regardless of the fact that the woods are full of badgers and therefore surrounded by gunmen, one person said, “I always feel safe when I’m in a wood.”

The highs and the lows

While the culls last the pressure is relentless. Going out every day or night, or both, getting lost, getting stuck in mud, mile after mile of endless trudging, driving home and falling, bone-weary, into bed. Where one lies awake, worrying about how many badgers survived to live another day. It is not surprising that many people collapse after it’s over, prey to whatever bugs are doing the rounds.

One patroller wrote, “Currently running on a mixture of exhaustion, relief, anger and frustration here – I expect you feel the same.” But she added, “I shall always go on remembering the fantastic friendships formed, strangers that have become good friends, who share the same values and that you can absolutely rely on.”

And this is true for everyone. No one walks alone. The companionship, the bonds formed and the trust built between us makes for more courage than people thought they had, for determination to keep going and to calmly face the occasional bursts of stupid nastiness from farmers and cullers.

There’s laughter too: “What made me laugh? Stopping for a pee and wondering who was watching with night vision! And sitting in the pouring rain on a soggy bale of hay with friends about midnight in the middle of nowhere and thinking what a sight we must look. My sleeping-bag-suit always made people laugh!”

A high point? “My first patrol on a moonlit night, clambering over ancient styles, each one different in its form and antiquity. I felt like a dog with an extremely arthritic hip at the end.”

And the low points? “Our cars blocked in by shooters in the woods, rescued by M and the police. The shock of finding a shooting tower and peanuts illegally planted right next to a badger sett.

“Being horrified at the threatening behaviour of two farming women. One tried to stop us on the public footpath, demanding to know which walking group we were with. The other shone the lights of her 4×4 in our faces, till we told her we were legally on a public footpath, when she replied ‘Oh, I was just worried about you, my cows are in that field and might frighten you’.”

Nowt so queer as folk …

It is amazing how little imagination pro-cull farmers display – swear words spat out of vehicle windows as they drive past, or stopping and asking “Are you lost?”, “Are you happy?”, “Do you enjoy walking in the dark?”, or “I don’t want my cows to frighten you.” That last is sometimes “I don’t want you to frighten my cows”, when the cows are in the next field or may not be there at all…

One farmer drove up to a patrol walking across a field. “Don’t want you to go in that field, I have cows there”, indicating the next field. Patrollers said they weren’t going there. “Because a day or two ago I found a dead calf there”, implying it was the patrollers what done it. A pause. “I found it last week.” Pause, mumble, mumble, “Well, maybe two weeks ago.”

Whatever challenges patrollers might face, it won’t be pro-culler intelligence. Whatever footpaths patrollers are using, they often go by or through farmyards and walkers see at firsthand the dirty disease-ridden state of many farms. This patroller reported all he had seen the authorities:

“One farmyard was completely covered in slurry (which can support bovine TB bacilli for many months). This farm is currently locked down with bTB. The farmer in question took part in the badger cull.

“On a neighbouring farm I found two newly dead roe deer, each left to rot in a field supporting dairy cattle. This farmer also took part in the badger cull. I could go on about dead sheep left to rot, dead stock thrown over a fence into scrub, or piles of farm bio-hazard waste dumped on a public footpath …

“If farmers want to be taken seriously when they profess to be fighting bTB, they have a mountain of work to do to get their own house in order before they blame the humble badger.”

And finally … the absolute high that keeps people going

“Having stopped the shooting and made the guns leave, we drive back home tired out and longing for bed, when we see the best thing of all – badgers setting out on their own night-time patrols.”

Will you join the badger patrols this year? Why not contact your local badger group and find out if they run training days. Many badger patrol groups have their own pages on Facebook.

Lesley Docksey is a freelance writer who writes for The Ecologist and other media on the badger cull and other environmental topics, and on political issues for UK and international websites. 

With the prospect of yet more areas being opened up to the cruel and unscientific badger culls this year, badger groups are wondering how they can encourage more people to come out on patrol during the culls.

The many thousands of people who support badgers, do the marches and sign petitions, does not translate into thousands of ‘boots on the ground’. Why?

Perhaps people don’t understand quite what patrolling to protect badgers involves. They’ve read the horror stories on social media, think it’s all in the dark and facing threatening men with guns – scary stuff. Some of it can be, but it’s mostly walking, endless walking.

People walk during the day, on lanes and public rights of way, noting any signs of preparation for night-time killing, spotting cage-traps being transported or locating bait points. These are peanuts hidden under flat stones or turf. Badgers find them and stay to eat, making a nice easy target for a gun.

Others walk in the late afternoon, locating cage-traps that have been set ready for the night and passing the information on to others who remove the traps (borderline legal) or damage them (illegal and not part of patrolling).

Or there’s the very early morning walk, finding cages with badgers inside before the cullers come back to shoot them. It is quite legal to release these badgers if you believe the badger is ‘distressed’.

Meeting threats and idiocy with polite reserve

And yes, patrols go out at night, being as visible as possible on rights of way, deterring any shooters, reporting shots heard to those less visible, who can go in and move the cullers on. There are times when patrols are faced with abusive behaviour, but one’s never alone, as this patroller relates:

“We had all but finished a patrol and were walking, with bright torches and wearing hi-vis, back to the car. As we passed this particular farm, the owners and passengers ‘happened’ to arrive home in their car. They passed us then slowed the car down to almost stopped, turned hard and drove at us at some considerable speed, stopping just a few inches away from us. We ignored it and carried on walking.

“We then got the usual ‘Are you lost?’ routine. We said ‘No’ and walked on while they all fell about laughing. However, on spotting Tony’s body cam they soon became apologetic and claimed they hadn’t seen us!

“A few minutes later we were approached by a Land Rover. Prepared for another round of stupidity, we were really pleased to find it was Kernow (Cornwall) sabs who’d seen the whole thing from their high vantage point and had come to check we were OK.

“It was awesome to realise that whatever we may encounter, we’ve got a fantastic team behind us who are all watching each other’s backs.”

Because guns are involved, police are always in the area. Some policing is poor, some good and helpful. Not everyone trusts them, but they have a duty to protect and, as seen above, can and will intervene when necessary.

If you decide to take part, remember this: barring violence and criminal damage which are not part of badger patrols, patrollers have a legal right to go where they go and do what they do. Some police are gradually learning to support patrollers in that.

Equipment, travel and rest

Some equipment is essential. Apart from the obvious warm clothing, waterproofs, boots, high-visibility jackets, torches with spare batteries, maps, compasses, cameras and mobile phones with a GPS facility, one should add, if possible, dashboard and body cameras to record any incidents.

Night vision binoculars are helpful and thermal imagers would be a great aid, but are horrendously expensive unless you’re funded by the taxpayer, which patrollers aren’t.

People come from far away. Two volunteers, faithfully driving miles on several nights and trying to balance environmental concerns (carbon emissions v badgers) commented: “We saw badgers, barn and tawny owls, and an eruption of toads … our very visible presence helped to keep alive the local and national debate around the cull, challenge the cull and look after individual badgers.”

The Isle of Wight’s badger group sent people to help Dorset. One young man came by ferry across the Channel and hitched down to Somerset, plannning to stay for the duration. Somerset sent him on to Cornwall, which was experiencing its first year of culling and desperately needed help.

Some people stay at the Camp Badger sites set up by local hunt saboteurs, and some lucky folk get real beds and loving care:

“When the call came out for places to accommodate people coming to help save badgers, I offered up our B&B so they could have somewhere dry and warm to stay. The people we have hosted have been lovely, kind and passionate; their stories have been amazing and given me a glimpse into the world of the front-line wildlife campaigner. Their relief, after a long night of activity, at being able to slump in a hot bath and a cosy bed was priceless.”

Nature as you’ve never seen it before – beautiful, but marred by the horror of culling.

“Looking over a Dorset landscape by day, or under a starlight sky, is deeply moving. But when on patrol the experience is instantly marred by the thought of what is happening out there. That almost unbearable feeling, however, is partially eased by the knowledge that we are there trying to do something about it.

“We retraced our steps and saw headlights coming towards us. An open truck with three young men swaggering upright in the back wielding guns, gleefully informed us they were out culling. It was very strange to be among such beauty while being subjected to the horror and the reality of the killing fields. The beauty and the beast are alive in our woods but this is no fairy tale.”

“Standing on one of the county’s massive hillforts, high above the surrounding land, one can only guess at the landscape below. In the dark all that is invisible. But we are, standing high and shining our torches down onto the farms below, a message writen on the sky – badger protectors are here. From some miles away we are seen. Another patrol drives up, coming to check who’s on the hill. A greeting, a chat and they are off again, racing to a farm down below, while we go on walking and shining our torches.”

Walking through ancient woodland at night is a wonderland, torches playing over massive knarled trunks and branches towering against a moonlit sky – not to be missed. And regardless of the fact that the woods are full of badgers and therefore surrounded by gunmen, one person said, “I always feel safe when I’m in a wood.”

The highs and the lows

While the culls last the pressure is relentless. Going out every day or night, or both, getting lost, getting stuck in mud, mile after mile of endless trudging, driving home and falling, bone-weary, into bed. Where one lies awake, worrying about how many badgers survived to live another day. It is not surprising that many people collapse after it’s over, prey to whatever bugs are doing the rounds.

One patroller wrote, “Currently running on a mixture of exhaustion, relief, anger and frustration here – I expect you feel the same.” But she added, “I shall always go on remembering the fantastic friendships formed, strangers that have become good friends, who share the same values and that you can absolutely rely on.”

And this is true for everyone. No one walks alone. The companionship, the bonds formed and the trust built between us makes for more courage than people thought they had, for determination to keep going and to calmly face the occasional bursts of stupid nastiness from farmers and cullers.

There’s laughter too: “What made me laugh? Stopping for a pee and wondering who was watching with night vision! And sitting in the pouring rain on a soggy bale of hay with friends about midnight in the middle of nowhere and thinking what a sight we must look. My sleeping-bag-suit always made people laugh!”

A high point? “My first patrol on a moonlit night, clambering over ancient styles, each one different in its form and antiquity. I felt like a dog with an extremely arthritic hip at the end.”

And the low points? “Our cars blocked in by shooters in the woods, rescued by M and the police. The shock of finding a shooting tower and peanuts illegally planted right next to a badger sett.

“Being horrified at the threatening behaviour of two farming women. One tried to stop us on the public footpath, demanding to know which walking group we were with. The other shone the lights of her 4×4 in our faces, till we told her we were legally on a public footpath, when she replied ‘Oh, I was just worried about you, my cows are in that field and might frighten you’.”

Nowt so queer as folk …

It is amazing how little imagination pro-cull farmers display – swear words spat out of vehicle windows as they drive past, or stopping and asking “Are you lost?”, “Are you happy?”, “Do you enjoy walking in the dark?”, or “I don’t want my cows to frighten you.” That last is sometimes “I don’t want you to frighten my cows”, when the cows are in the next field or may not be there at all…

One farmer drove up to a patrol walking across a field. “Don’t want you to go in that field, I have cows there”, indicating the next field. Patrollers said they weren’t going there. “Because a day or two ago I found a dead calf there”, implying it was the patrollers what done it. A pause. “I found it last week.” Pause, mumble, mumble, “Well, maybe two weeks ago.”

Whatever challenges patrollers might face, it won’t be pro-culler intelligence. Whatever footpaths patrollers are using, they often go by or through farmyards and walkers see at firsthand the dirty disease-ridden state of many farms. This patroller reported all he had seen the authorities:

“One farmyard was completely covered in slurry (which can support bovine TB bacilli for many months). This farm is currently locked down with bTB. The farmer in question took part in the badger cull.

“On a neighbouring farm I found two newly dead roe deer, each left to rot in a field supporting dairy cattle. This farmer also took part in the badger cull. I could go on about dead sheep left to rot, dead stock thrown over a fence into scrub, or piles of farm bio-hazard waste dumped on a public footpath …

“If farmers want to be taken seriously when they profess to be fighting bTB, they have a mountain of work to do to get their own house in order before they blame the humble badger.”

And finally … the absolute high that keeps people going

“Having stopped the shooting and made the guns leave, we drive back home tired out and longing for bed, when we see the best thing of all – badgers setting out on their own night-time patrols.”

Will you join the badger patrols this year? Why not contact your local badger group and find out if they run training days. Many badger patrol groups have their own pages on Facebook.

Lesley Docksey is a freelance writer who writes for The Ecologist and other media on the badger cull and other environmental topics, and on political issues for UK and international websites. 

Dear Paul Coffey, CEO of RWE npower, owner of Aberthaw power station.

Let me introduce myself. My name is Luz Ángela Uriana Epiayu. I live in the indigenous Wayúu reservation Provincial, which is in North Eastern Colombia, in the department of La Guajira.

I am writing to ask that you do not increase imports of coal from Colombia to your Aberthaw power station in South Wales but instead close the power station down.

I know that the European Court of Justice has ruled against the UK government allowing Aberthaw to emit high levels of nitrogen oxides, which damages the health of people downwind of the power station.

The solution to this health problem is not to substitute the Welsh coal currently burnt at the power station with coal from Colombia, which pollutes our health – but to close the power station!

Our children are suffering. Some have died

My son Moisés Daniel is sick with a high fever and a dry cough, and he is having trouble breathing. This started when he was about six months old. He is still only three years old.

I live very close the Cerrejón coal mine, hardly a kilometre and a half away; we are so, so close. Because of the coal dust created by Cerrejón, Moisés gets this dry cough. He needs clean air in his lungs. That’s why it is hard for him to breathe, he breathes contaminated air twenty-four hours a day.

Even for those of us who don’t suffer any effects, we can still smell the coal. Every day I wonder how he must feel, he’s just a tiny little boy. He is not the only child in my family affected. Last year, a girl of just eight months died because of the coal dust that caked her lungs.

Cerrejón says that it adheres to Colombian laws for pollution levels. This is true, but it doesn’t mean much. Colombian laws allow sulphur oxides at a concentration of 250 micrograms per cubic metre, yet the World Health Organisation recommends that 20 micrograms per cubic metre is the maximum. This level is often broken by Cerrejón.

Why should our children die so Europeans can produce dirty electricity? 72% of the coal mined in Colombia is burnt in Europe. In 2015 the UK imported 20 million tonnes of coal for power stations, 41% of this from Russia and 37% from Colombia. Here, our communities suffer.

We will not be paid off by bribes and inducements!

I am not able to stand by and let this happen to my children or the people in this area. When I took Moisés to the doctors they recommended that we leave the reservation because of the environmental contamination.

I had to fight with the public health company and the doctors, because it is hard to be referred to a specialist. I pleaded with them and with Cerrejón to help me; I asked for an appointment with the specialist doctors, with the paediatrician and for the money for the medicines we needed. But no one offered to help.

So I had to take a case to the Colombian justice system. I asked them to reduce the pollution from the mine, which is all over my house, my reservation, for the sake of my son’s health.

Then, a representative from Cerrejón came to my house saying it would pay for my son’s health care and offered my husband a job, but only on the condition that I dropped my claim. I couldn’t drop the claim because we all need to breathe clean air and you can´t buy the life of a child.

The company must change the way it operates so that it does not pollute so much. The mine has been here for 40 years and yet there has never been an independent investigation into the health impacts that the mine is having on our tribe. We do not know the full extent of the health problems it creates.

I am a human rights defender and I am not only defending the rights of my children, but of the children in all of La Guajira. In the hope that they can grow up in a healthy environment and that they will have opportunities in their lives.

Victory in the courts – but nothing has changed!

The rulings went in Moisés’ favour. The judges decided that there was an imminent risk to his health and his rights. They ordered the Cerrejón coal company, the health provider and the Colombian environmental authorities, to provide him with adequate health care and make a plan which guarantees that he can continue living in our reservation.

The rulings have gone in my son’s favour. But nothing has changed. I am demanding that Cerrejón reduces the pollution, but the pollution will remain if you decide to buy coal from Cerrejón.

Recently I came to London to denounce the impacts of having a coal mine as our neighbour. I spoke at the BHP Billiton AGM – they along with Glencore and Anglo-American own the Cerrejón coal mine. It was horrible to be there and to try to talk to them. Why don’t they listen to us? Will you listen to us? The situation here makes our lives very hard. Our territory is rich in coal but after 40 years of the Cerrejón mine the area is very, very poor.

So I am asking you not to increase the consumption of imported coal. For the sake of the children living in my reservation please do not encourage more extraction. Wherever coal is mined there are health impacts on the local population, be that from Colombian, Russian or Welsh coal.

Please consider this and close Aberthaw power station, rather than add to the erosion of the health and traditions of the communities living near coal mines.

In peace,

Luz Ángela Uriana Epiayu.

Luz Angela Uriana Epiayu is an Indigenous environmental activist and defender of children’s and Indigenous rights in Colombia’s northeastern Guajira department, where her community suffers the impacts of one of the largest open-pit coal mines in the world. She is mother to six children, and one of her sons, Moises Daniel, suffers from respiratory problems the family attributes to air pollution emanating from the coal mine. Uriana’s activism is driven by her desire to see the Cerrejon coal mine, owned in part by BHP Billiton, shut down. Uriana has been nominated as a finalist for Colombia’s 2016 National Prize for the Defense of Human Rights. This bionote is from TelesurfTV.

Wangan and Jangalingou Traditional Owners this week took a step closer to filing federal court papers challenging a document Adani “is trying to pass off as an Indigenous Land Use Agreement with our people” but which is “illegitimate” according to W&J Traditional Owner Council, Mr. Adrian Burragubba. The claim is over access to land near the mining town of Clermont in Central Queensland, 600 miles north of Brisbane.

The move follows the landmark ‘McGlade’ court ruling in Western Australia, earlier this month. The “McGlade” ruling states that, unless all peoples named on any native title claim – a Registered Native Title Claimants (RNTC) document – agree to lease the land, then no mining can go ahead.

In the W & J case, 40 percent (five out of 12) of those named on the RNTC refuse to support the Indigenous Land Use Agreement over fears for the ecosystem and the loss of cultural heritage.

Environmental concerns over this project stem from the threat to the survival of sacred springs and to the tradition of maintaining songlines – ancestral lines connecting across the land to protect the Earth. With 12 billion litres of water, (the equivalent to 400 Olympic size pools) needed for the mine, there’s unease over the future security of the Carmichael River and sacred Doongmabulla Springs. The springs are both central to the indigenous belief of dreamtime and the creation story and are an important ecosystem to the region.

 What is native title?

Australia’s Native Title Act (1993) ensures that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are entitled to land taken from clans after the arrival of Europeans in the 18^th Century.  Communities enter into an Indigenous Land Use Agreement (ILUA) with mining companies over the use of traditional land rights.

ILUA is a voluntary agreement between a native title group and others over the suitable use of land and waters. ILUAs cover topics ranging from mining, future development, economic benefits including employment and compensation, preservation of cultural heritage and the safeguarding of native title rights, along with the rights of other people.

In 2004, Wangan and Jagalingou Peoples lodged a native title claim with the Registered Native Title Claimants (RNTC) for land they possess. The claim includes the right and interest to hunt, fish, camp, access natural resources, conduct traditional ceremonies, protect customs and traditions of the land, educate on the lands’ physical and spiritual attributes, and to be buried as native title holders on that land.

W&J youth leader and Council spokesperson, Murrawah Johnson, says: “We have maintained all along that Adani does not have the consent of the rightful Traditional Owners. Our Traditional Owners group have rejected an ILUA with Adani three times. We will defeat Adani’s fake ILUA and continue to fight for our land and culture until the company and Governments respect our rights and abandon this disastrous proposal”.

Adani reject claims over jobs and lack of indigenous support

Where green groups have failed in the courts, the indigenous peoples hope for success with a network of support and a different set of tools.

“Environmentalists and environmental campaigns have ways to take legal action to prevent the mines. I’m not saying for certain that we are going to win, but we’ve got a different set of tools we get to use” a W&J Council advisor told the Ecologist.  

These tools include international support from other first nations and indigenous groups and the United Nations Special Rapporteur, Victoria Lucia Tauli-Corpuz.  The Tauli-Corpuz report (2016) recommends that Australia – a supporter of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People’s  (UNDRIP, 2009) – upholds Article 32, granting traditional owners legal recourse to contest their land being used without their free, prior and informed consent.

W & J is also working with the Athabasca Chipewyan battling the tar sands in Alberta; the Achuar Indians fighting oil and gas in the Amazon and the Ogoni and Ijaw’s fight against Shell in the Niger Delta, and plan to take this campaign global – a W&J Council advisor says “we already have international connections and support. Our intention is to widen this campaign, the cause and promote it globally”.

Adani’s Response

Adani in conjunction with the Bowen Basin Mining Company (BBMC) recently held a series of roadshows in the region for those seeking jobs and supply contracts. Nearly 1,300 regional business owners and suppliers met key project team members from both Adani and the mine construction and operations contractor, Downer Group. BBMC stated that “The supplier briefings were all extremely well-attended, with exceptional support from local industry associations, indigenous communities, councils and peak economic development bodies”, adding that “there was also a strong show of support for the Carmichael project from the Wangan & Jagalingou Traditional Owner groups, as well as other Indigenous groups and businesses in all locations”.

The roadshow events began with an indigenous supplier briefing, with Indigenous groups singled out as “a large focus of the mine, rail and port projects…the key to effective supplier proposals is indigenous involvement, as indigenous training and jobs, along with regional supply, are main priorities for project procurement”.

Some members of W&J are challenging the focus on indigenous jobs: “The jobs and benefits to indigenous peoples argument is a sham. It’s the usual package to clear the regulatory hurdles around native title” warned a W&J Council advisor.

 Whilst Adani continues to work with indigenous groups over native title claims, green groups have been accused of underhand illegal tactics that could prevent jobs for the community.  

 Queensland Resource Council (QRC) has accused green groups of threatening behavior, saying: ” While we believe it is a democratic right to protest, using dishonest and underhanded tactics in a bid to cheat Queenslanders out of jobs, is going too far. We can only hope that no-one has been put in danger, or hurt, as a result of these desperate tactics, which had the potential to bring these groups into personal direct conflict with regional Queensland business people in attendance” said a company statement.

Undeterred, environmental activists groups are looking to work with the W & J and planning to hold the largest protest campaign the country has witnessed in the coming months. The Galilee Blockade  campaigns will wait and see if W & J request support, and will continue to plan large scale direct actions and blockades.

Australian Government’s response is to bypass the law

In a week where Australian Treasurer Scott Morrison, Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce and Minister for Energy and the Environment, Josh Frydenberg passed around the parliamentary chamber a large lump of coal in support of the fossil fuel industry, both the Federal and Queensland governments are looking at ways to push through the project as a matter of national critical infrastructure development.

Australia’s pro-mining Attorney General George Brandis wants to rush through new legislation allowing the Adani mine and the remaining 40 other mining projects in Queensland all affected by the McGlade ruling to go ahead.

Any new legislation would be a reversal of current policy to a 2010 ruling (Bygraves decision) that stated that as long as a majority decision was made by a native title claimant group then all deals can go ahead.

Leading Aboriginal rights advocate, a primary W&J Traditional Owner and Council, Adrian Burragubba, says: “Our fight is far from over. Anyone who wants to bankroll Adani, and the Queensland and Commonwealth Governments, is now on notice that we will not stand by if attempts are made, in response to the Noongar decision, to put our rights and interests, and our laws and customs, on the chopping block for the mining lobby,”.

Wangan and Jangalingou Traditional Owners are currently awaiting for Adani’s official response before deciding whether to go to court.  

This Author

Maxine Newlands reports on Australian environmental issues for the Ecologist

Dear Paul Coffey, CEO of RWE npower, owner of Aberthaw power station.

Let me introduce myself. My name is Luz Ángela Uriana Epiayu. I live in the indigenous Wayúu reservation Provincial, which is in North Eastern Colombia, in the department of La Guajira.

I am writing to ask that you do not increase imports of coal from Colombia to your Aberthaw power station in South Wales but instead close the power station down.

I know that the European Court of Justice has ruled against the UK government allowing Aberthaw to emit high levels of nitrogen oxides, which damages the health of people downwind of the power station.

The solution to this health problem is not to substitute the Welsh coal currently burnt at the power station with coal from Colombia, which pollutes our health – but to close the power station!

Our children are suffering. Some have died

My son Moisés Daniel is sick with a high fever and a dry cough, and he is having trouble breathing. This started when he was about six months old. He is still only three years old.

I live very close the Cerrejón coal mine, hardly a kilometre and a half away; we are so, so close. Because of the coal dust created by Cerrejón, Moisés gets this dry cough. He needs clean air in his lungs. That’s why it is hard for him to breathe, he breathes contaminated air twenty-four hours a day.

Even for those of us who don’t suffer any effects, we can still smell the coal. Every day I wonder how he must feel, he’s just a tiny little boy. He is not the only child in my family affected. Last year, a girl of just eight months died because of the coal dust that caked her lungs.

Cerrejón says that it adheres to Colombian laws for pollution levels. This is true, but it doesn’t mean much. Colombian laws allow sulphur oxides at a concentration of 250 micrograms per cubic metre, yet the World Health Organisation recommends that 20 micrograms per cubic metre is the maximum. This level is often broken by Cerrejón.

Why should our children die so Europeans can produce dirty electricity? 72% of the coal mined in Colombia is burnt in Europe. In 2015 the UK imported 20 million tonnes of coal for power stations, 41% of this from Russia and 37% from Colombia. Here, our communities suffer.

We will not be paid off by bribes and inducements!

I am not able to stand by and let this happen to my children or the people in this area. When I took Moisés to the doctors they recommended that we leave the reservation because of the environmental contamination.

I had to fight with the public health company and the doctors, because it is hard to be referred to a specialist. I pleaded with them and with Cerrejón to help me; I asked for an appointment with the specialist doctors, with the paediatrician and for the money for the medicines we needed. But no one offered to help.

So I had to take a case to the Colombian justice system. I asked them to reduce the pollution from the mine, which is all over my house, my reservation, for the sake of my son’s health.

Then, a representative from Cerrejón came to my house saying it would pay for my son’s health care and offered my husband a job, but only on the condition that I dropped my claim. I couldn’t drop the claim because we all need to breathe clean air and you can´t buy the life of a child.

The company must change the way it operates so that it does not pollute so much. The mine has been here for 40 years and yet there has never been an independent investigation into the health impacts that the mine is having on our tribe. We do not know the full extent of the health problems it creates.

I am a human rights defender and I am not only defending the rights of my children, but of the children in all of La Guajira. In the hope that they can grow up in a healthy environment and that they will have opportunities in their lives.

Victory in the courts – but nothing has changed!

The rulings went in Moisés’ favour. The judges decided that there was an imminent risk to his health and his rights. They ordered the Cerrejón coal company, the health provider and the Colombian environmental authorities, to provide him with adequate health care and make a plan which guarantees that he can continue living in our reservation.

The rulings have gone in my son’s favour. But nothing has changed. I am demanding that Cerrejón reduces the pollution, but the pollution will remain if you decide to buy coal from Cerrejón.

Recently I came to London to denounce the impacts of having a coal mine as our neighbour. I spoke at the BHP Billiton AGM – they along with Glencore and Anglo-American own the Cerrejón coal mine. It was horrible to be there and to try to talk to them. Why don’t they listen to us? Will you listen to us? The situation here makes our lives very hard. Our territory is rich in coal but after 40 years of the Cerrejón mine the area is very, very poor.

So I am asking you not to increase the consumption of imported coal. For the sake of the children living in my reservation please do not encourage more extraction. Wherever coal is mined there are health impacts on the local population, be that from Colombian, Russian or Welsh coal.

Please consider this and close Aberthaw power station, rather than add to the erosion of the health and traditions of the communities living near coal mines.

In peace,

Luz Ángela Uriana Epiayu.

Luz Angela Uriana Epiayu is an Indigenous environmental activist and defender of children’s and Indigenous rights in Colombia’s northeastern Guajira department, where her community suffers the impacts of one of the largest open-pit coal mines in the world. She is mother to six children, and one of her sons, Moises Daniel, suffers from respiratory problems the family attributes to air pollution emanating from the coal mine. Uriana’s activism is driven by her desire to see the Cerrejon coal mine, owned in part by BHP Billiton, shut down. Uriana has been nominated as a finalist for Colombia’s 2016 National Prize for the Defense of Human Rights. This bionote is from TelesurfTV.

Wangan and Jangalingou Traditional Owners this week took a step closer to filing federal court papers challenging a document Adani “is trying to pass off as an Indigenous Land Use Agreement with our people” but which is “illegitimate” according to W&J Traditional Owner Council, Mr. Adrian Burragubba. The claim is over access to land near the mining town of Clermont in Central Queensland, 600 miles north of Brisbane.

The move follows the landmark ‘McGlade’ court ruling in Western Australia, earlier this month. The “McGlade” ruling states that, unless all peoples named on any native title claim – a Registered Native Title Claimants (RNTC) document – agree to lease the land, then no mining can go ahead.

In the W & J case, 40 percent (five out of 12) of those named on the RNTC refuse to support the Indigenous Land Use Agreement over fears for the ecosystem and the loss of cultural heritage.

Environmental concerns over this project stem from the threat to the survival of sacred springs and to the tradition of maintaining songlines – ancestral lines connecting across the land to protect the Earth. With 12 billion litres of water, (the equivalent to 400 Olympic size pools) needed for the mine, there’s unease over the future security of the Carmichael River and sacred Doongmabulla Springs. The springs are both central to the indigenous belief of dreamtime and the creation story and are an important ecosystem to the region.

 What is native title?

Australia’s Native Title Act (1993) ensures that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are entitled to land taken from clans after the arrival of Europeans in the 18^th Century.  Communities enter into an Indigenous Land Use Agreement (ILUA) with mining companies over the use of traditional land rights.

ILUA is a voluntary agreement between a native title group and others over the suitable use of land and waters. ILUAs cover topics ranging from mining, future development, economic benefits including employment and compensation, preservation of cultural heritage and the safeguarding of native title rights, along with the rights of other people.

In 2004, Wangan and Jagalingou Peoples lodged a native title claim with the Registered Native Title Claimants (RNTC) for land they possess. The claim includes the right and interest to hunt, fish, camp, access natural resources, conduct traditional ceremonies, protect customs and traditions of the land, educate on the lands’ physical and spiritual attributes, and to be buried as native title holders on that land.

W&J youth leader and Council spokesperson, Murrawah Johnson, says: “We have maintained all along that Adani does not have the consent of the rightful Traditional Owners. Our Traditional Owners group have rejected an ILUA with Adani three times. We will defeat Adani’s fake ILUA and continue to fight for our land and culture until the company and Governments respect our rights and abandon this disastrous proposal”.

Adani reject claims over jobs and lack of indigenous support

Where green groups have failed in the courts, the indigenous peoples hope for success with a network of support and a different set of tools.

“Environmentalists and environmental campaigns have ways to take legal action to prevent the mines. I’m not saying for certain that we are going to win, but we’ve got a different set of tools we get to use” a W&J Council advisor told the Ecologist.  

These tools include international support from other first nations and indigenous groups and the United Nations Special Rapporteur, Victoria Lucia Tauli-Corpuz.  The Tauli-Corpuz report (2016) recommends that Australia – a supporter of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People’s  (UNDRIP, 2009) – upholds Article 32, granting traditional owners legal recourse to contest their land being used without their free, prior and informed consent.

W & J is also working with the Athabasca Chipewyan battling the tar sands in Alberta; the Achuar Indians fighting oil and gas in the Amazon and the Ogoni and Ijaw’s fight against Shell in the Niger Delta, and plan to take this campaign global – a W&J Council advisor says “we already have international connections and support. Our intention is to widen this campaign, the cause and promote it globally”.

Adani’s Response

Adani in conjunction with the Bowen Basin Mining Company (BBMC) recently held a series of roadshows in the region for those seeking jobs and supply contracts. Nearly 1,300 regional business owners and suppliers met key project team members from both Adani and the mine construction and operations contractor, Downer Group. BBMC stated that “The supplier briefings were all extremely well-attended, with exceptional support from local industry associations, indigenous communities, councils and peak economic development bodies”, adding that “there was also a strong show of support for the Carmichael project from the Wangan & Jagalingou Traditional Owner groups, as well as other Indigenous groups and businesses in all locations”.

The roadshow events began with an indigenous supplier briefing, with Indigenous groups singled out as “a large focus of the mine, rail and port projects…the key to effective supplier proposals is indigenous involvement, as indigenous training and jobs, along with regional supply, are main priorities for project procurement”.

Some members of W&J are challenging the focus on indigenous jobs: “The jobs and benefits to indigenous peoples argument is a sham. It’s the usual package to clear the regulatory hurdles around native title” warned a W&J Council advisor.

 Whilst Adani continues to work with indigenous groups over native title claims, green groups have been accused of underhand illegal tactics that could prevent jobs for the community.  

 Queensland Resource Council (QRC) has accused green groups of threatening behavior, saying: ” While we believe it is a democratic right to protest, using dishonest and underhanded tactics in a bid to cheat Queenslanders out of jobs, is going too far. We can only hope that no-one has been put in danger, or hurt, as a result of these desperate tactics, which had the potential to bring these groups into personal direct conflict with regional Queensland business people in attendance” said a company statement.

Undeterred, environmental activists groups are looking to work with the W & J and planning to hold the largest protest campaign the country has witnessed in the coming months. The Galilee Blockade  campaigns will wait and see if W & J request support, and will continue to plan large scale direct actions and blockades.

Australian Government’s response is to bypass the law

In a week where Australian Treasurer Scott Morrison, Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce and Minister for Energy and the Environment, Josh Frydenberg passed around the parliamentary chamber a large lump of coal in support of the fossil fuel industry, both the Federal and Queensland governments are looking at ways to push through the project as a matter of national critical infrastructure development.

Australia’s pro-mining Attorney General George Brandis wants to rush through new legislation allowing the Adani mine and the remaining 40 other mining projects in Queensland all affected by the McGlade ruling to go ahead.

Any new legislation would be a reversal of current policy to a 2010 ruling (Bygraves decision) that stated that as long as a majority decision was made by a native title claimant group then all deals can go ahead.

Leading Aboriginal rights advocate, a primary W&J Traditional Owner and Council, Adrian Burragubba, says: “Our fight is far from over. Anyone who wants to bankroll Adani, and the Queensland and Commonwealth Governments, is now on notice that we will not stand by if attempts are made, in response to the Noongar decision, to put our rights and interests, and our laws and customs, on the chopping block for the mining lobby,”.

Wangan and Jangalingou Traditional Owners are currently awaiting for Adani’s official response before deciding whether to go to court.  

This Author

Maxine Newlands reports on Australian environmental issues for the Ecologist

Is Donald Trump trying to make puppy mills great again?

Actually, that’s a trick question because puppy mills were never great. In fact, puppy mills are one of the uglier bits of scumbaggery to emerge from a burgeoning pet industry that has, according to the American Pet Products Association, ballooned from $17 billion in 1994 to nearly $63 billion in 2016.

About $2.1 billion of that total is ‘live animal purchases’, and the people who butter their bread by breeding animals fall under the regulatory purview of the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS).

Right now, there are an estimated 10,000 dog breeders nationwide, and the USDA’s minuscule budget of $28 million annually means they only keep tabs on a small fraction of them. As a result, there are fewer than 3,000 officially ‘regulated’ breeders.

Falling into that sizable gap between ‘regulated’ and ‘unregulated’ are thousands of facilities ignominiously known as ‘puppy mills’.

Factory farms for dogs

If you haven’t seen video footage of a puppy mill, you might not be aware of just how sadly appropriate that moniker is for these fetid factories of fecundity. Unregulated breeders run Dickensian ‘mills’ filled with malnutritioned, poorly-groomed, and chronically infirm dogs that are all-too-often crammed into cages throughout the entirety of their utterly bereft lives.

Each of these captive canines produces an average of nearly ten puppies per year in operations that amount to the factory farming of dogs. The puppies are sold in retail stores for a tidy profit to customers who often find their newest member of the family is sick or overbred or worse.

For those seeking compensation for their ‘defective product’, tracking back to the breeders is a daunting task. Even if they’ve been inspected and accumulated numerous violations, the USDA rarely revokes licenses or even enforces minimum compliance with the law. Amazingly, it has collected less than $4 million in fines over the last two years, according to a shocking investigative report published in a recent issue of Rolling Stone.

But now the difficult task of keeping tabs on sleazy breeders who refuse to comply with even the meager, decrepit standards of the anachronistic Animal Welfare Act (AWA) just got a whole lot harder.

That’s thanks in part to the Trump Administration’s ‘delete first … so we won’t have to ask questions later’ approach to everything related to science, public health, safety, or anything that might crimp the money-making style of Trump’s corporate supporters.

Draining the swamp? Or swamping the drain?

In the spirit of gag orders imposed on a number of science-dependent agencies, the USDA abruptly ‘purged’ its online database of “inspection reports and other information from its website about the treatment of animals at thousands of research laboratories, zoos, dog breeding operations and other facilities”, according to a story first reported by the Washington Post.

“Going forward, APHIS will remove from its website inspection reports, regulatory correspondence, research facility annual reports, and enforcement records that have not received final adjudication. APHIS will also review and redact, as necessary, the lists of licensees and registrants under the AWA, as well as lists of designated qualified persons (DQPs) licensed by USDA-certified horse industry organizations”, the USDA said on its website.

And it’s that last bit about “USDA-certified horse industry organizations” that might be the key to unraveling a move that has outraged animal welfare activists, journalists, and even a few conservative commentators like Laura Ingraham and Tammy Bruce. Writing in the Washington Times, Ms. Bruce questioned the move as a “disturbing” and “odd” move for an “administration to be committed to transparency, draining the swamp and ending lobbyist control of policy.”

Of course, it’s hard to tell whether the Trump Administration wants to drain the swamp or to swamp the drain with crony capitalists in an attempt to flood the already financially fertile plains of Washington, DC with the loamy, rich monetary manure spread so profitably by key industries.

Who benefits?

So, who benefits from a widely unpopular decision that generated angry hashtags like #USDAblackout and #NoUSDAblackout … and the filing of a new lawsuit claiming the blackout illegally obstructs the application of the Animal Welfare Act?

New reporting by the Washington Post indicates senior staffers within the UDSA advocated the purge in response to a lawsuit over the controversial practice of ‘soring‘ the legs of walking horses with harsh chemicals that inflict enough pain to cause the animal’s “high-stepping” gait to rise just a little bit higher. That, in turn, makes them more successful in competitions and raises their value as a commodity. In other words, no pain means less financial gain.

Ironically, the USDA recently banned soring … but suddenly decided to implement the data purge despite the decision to prohibit the very practice that sparked the lawsuit that supposedly led to the purge.

Perhaps it’s not coincidental that the ban came after the national Humane Society conducted its own investigations into horse soring or that their investigation would’ve relied in part on the exactly the type of data collected by USDA inspectors. But now, just like it will with profligate puppy millers, the purge effectively hides the identity of “horse industry organizations” with a documented history of soring and gives them new room to run roughshod on animal welfare protections.

And who decided?

So, who made this perplexing, politically unpopular decision?

Although he wasn’t necessarily opposed to the purge when it was first proposed, outgoing Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack told the Post that he refused to sign-off on the new, information-obscuring rule because “there was not enough time for us to properly vet the recommendation, and I was concerned about transparency.”

But that was then and this is now. And now there is a new sheriff in town who has said regulations must go the way of the dying bumblebee his administration doesn’t want to list as an endangered species.

To wit, the prime mover behind the purge might be one of Trump’s lesser-known deputies – a guy name Brian Klippenstein of the industry-aligned Protect the Harvest. He is now the head of Trump’s USDA transition team. And the ‘harvest’ he and his barely-known advocacy group want to protect is the unchecked right of human beings to harvest animals for profit.

Mostly, they want to do so without any meddling by the Humane Society or even the barest protections for the welfare of animals. Klippenstein – who is something of a puppy mill enthusiast – is no doubt pleased with a purge that will make it easier to profit off of mistreating animals again.

So, with a tidy little bit of doublespeak, the USDA website replaced the database with a message explaining that the records were removed “based on our commitment to being transparent, remaining responsive to our stakeholders’ informational needs, and maintaining the privacy rights of individuals.”

Tying the animal defenders in red tape and paperwork

It’s the needs of those “stakeholders” – the breeders and businesses and big agricultural interests – that will predictably win out in this crony-laden administration. But wait … maybe this was just part of Team Trump’s war on the onerous, freedom-killing regulatory state … right? Hardly.

According to a fact sheet from the HSUS, these anything-but-onerous USDA ‘regulations’ make it perfectly legal to “keep dozens or even hundreds of breeding dogs in small wire cages for their entire lives with only the basics of food, water and rudimentary shelter.”

Despite that, many of the licensed breeders violate these comically inadequate standards in their never-ending quest to cruelly cut corners and squeeze a little more profit out of the cramped lives of dogs trapped in a perpetual cycle of insemination, pregnancy, and birth.

And that’s to say nothing of the thousands of unlicensed puppy mills whose only oversight comes from activists, nonprofits, journalists, and the occasional whistleblower … and whose operations only come to an end when these non-governmental do-gooders do the kind of good that one might expect from an agency tasked with the duty of ensuring a basic level of animal welfare.

As a result of the move, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), along with ASPCA, PETA, and hundreds of other smaller non-profit and volunteer animal welfare organizations around the country, will be tied up in red tape and tortuous FOIA paperwork if they want to access heretofore public information on zoos, laboratories, roadside attractions and, of course, puppy mills.

That matters because those organizations fill the gaping hole left by the sparsely funded, severely understaffed, and seemingly overmatched USDA.

The Humane Society is one of many non-government watchdogs that watch out for dogs by funding their own investigations and by even staging raids on puppy mills in concert with local law enforcement. The USDA’s now-purged database was often a roadmap leading the HSUS, ASPCA, and hundreds of local watchdogs to serial violators.

Without voluntary sector engagement, enforcement would hardly exist

The simple fact is that little is done even when the USDA is on the case, which is not that surprising for an agency with a well-greased revolving door between itself and the businesses it regulates.

Even Ringling Bros – whose violation data would be purged along with puppy millers – was able to get someone placed at the USDA back in 2011. Perhaps that helps explain why, as the HSUS points out, “there are hundreds of USDA-licensed puppy mills in operation that have a history of documented animal care violations that are still licensed.”

But that just one part of why access to the records accumulated by the USDA is so important. Natasha Daly of National Geographic wrote:

“These records have revealed many cases of abuse and mistreatment of animals, incidents that, if the reports had not been publicly posted, would likely have remained hidden. This action plunges journalists, animal welfare organizations, and the public at large into the dark about animal welfare at facilities across the country.”

As One Green Planet reported, it’s the same database that helped Boston Globe reporter Carolyn Johnson expose a “federally-funded primate testing facility” at Harvard University that mistreated thousands of monkeys despite repeated violations and $24,000 in fines … until it was ignominiously closed in 2015.

It was whistleblowers and journalists who used shocking footage to expose the cruelty that halted the captive breeding program at SeaWorld, ended years of torture and sickness for Ringling Brothers’ elephants, and sparked a wholesale revolution in the production of eggs when Mercy for Animals revealed the deplorable conditions of egg-laying chickens.

It was surreptitiously filmed videos that eventually led to McDonald’s, Walmart, and other major companies forcing their suppliers to adopt new welfare standards for the chickens they quite literally bank on to bring home the bacon.

The same has been happening with puppy mills, too

Increased awareness of the deplorable conditions – thanks in part to activists and journalists using the now deleted data – has led to a number of anti-puppy mill laws around the country.

Those efforts, along with campaigns to convince dog enthusiasts to adopt a soon-to-be-euthanized shelter dog over a costly retail puppy, have the pet industry mounting a counter-campaign of alternative facts designed to convince Americans that there is a puppy shortage in spite of the daunting facts.

Of course, the dog breeding industry is there to help re-puppy America – for a price. And their bottom line is that the less you know about the way those puppies are produced, the better it is for the conscience of consumers and their bank accounts. Frankly, that’s really what this purge portends … a wider crackdown on transparency and information in the USDA, which, along with the FDA, oversees the nation’s gargantuan factory farming industry.

The fact that Trump tapped former Georgia Governor Sonny Purdue to run the Department of Agriculture is the clearest signal yet that years of hard-won, incremental progress on animal welfare and increased safety in the food supply are likely to go the way of the dodo bird under factory farm-friendly Purdue.

Remember that time then-candidate Trump floated the idea of eliminating the FDA’s “food police“ who make sure there isn’t too much feces in the meat or too little safety in the nation’s vast, complicated food system?

Now, with Brian Klippenstein planting the seeds of profitability for factory farmers, horse sorers and, alas, puppy millers, Trump vision of ‘unchecked everything’ is coming into focus. Thanks to the purge, it just got harder for activists, journalists and whistleblowers to do what the USDA wasn’t capable of doing.

And it also became a little easier to be an animal-abusing ingrate again.

JP Sottile is a freelance journalist, published historian, radio co-host and documentary filmmaker (The Warning, 2008). His credits include a stint on the Newshour news desk, C-SPAN and as newsmagazine producer for ABC affiliate WJLA in Washington. His weekly show ‘Inside the Headlines With The Newsvandal‘ co-hosted by James Moore airs every Friday on KRUU-FM in Fairfield, Iowa. He blogs at Newsvandal and tweets @newsvandal.

Photo: Cage in a 500-puppy puppy mill, raided by voluntary organisations on 8th July 2009. By Josh Henderson via Flickr (CC BY-SA). Many more photos from the raid here.

This article was originally published on AntiMedia (Creative Commons).

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