Innocent Badger

In the last few weeks we have recieved confirmation that the people responsible for enforcing the rules and regulations with regards to the handling of dead badgers during the cull is the Animal Plant Health Agency (APHA).

We already knew a few people involved with APHA were monitoring the actual killing of badgers, most notably Ray Ridley who has been under close surveillance many times over the years, leading cull saboteurs straight to farms involved in killing.

Ray pictured above has done quite a lot of killing over the years, he frequently flies all over the world to kill whatever is seen as an “invasive species” you can read about his exploits killing yellow legged gulls in Gibralter here. Or his training of locals to kill feral livestock in Montseratt, a guide which he wrote himself and for some reason included photographs or dead people. The manual can be downloaded here.

We have dug through classified files leaked from Natural England and found that Ray Ridley’s little gang within APHA are called the “National Wildlife Management Team”, they not only travel the world killing animals, they also cull here in the UK, they currently have at least two licences.
One to kill the ruddy duck, the other to kill Monk Parakeets (AKA Quaker parrots)

Although Ray is clearly the top gun in the team, his boss is none other than a Dave Parrott his email was included in the application: dave.parrott@apha.gsi.gov.uk

This is the rest of the team who are on the application to kill the monk parakeets

Why do they kill monk parakeets? the explanation in the application is that
“they can cause severe local
damage to crops and their communal nests are often
built on utility structures (e.g. pylons and
substations where they can cause power outages. In
the USA the cost of nest removal alone to reduce the
risk of power outages was estimated to be $1.3m to
$4.7m over a 5 year period.”

This explanation is nonsense, we have an entirely different power supply and network to the USA and none of the monk parakeets we have in England have ever nested in pylons. We can see from other applications to kill these parakeets, the only reason they are considered a pest is because they bother farmers. A Mr. Kenneth Slaney in a seperate application to kill monk parakeets at Reeds Hill Farm, Benfleet, Essex, SS7 1PJ wrote that he wanted to shoot them because:
“Protection of cattle feed from contamination. Contamination of livestock living areas.”

We found that the licence didn’t only ask Natural England for permission to shoot these birds, but they also wanted to use “spring operated traps” and “Nest box traps” more on those traps in the application stated:
“During February and mid-March
2017, initial work on the development of a nest trap
will involve preparatory work in which components of
a trap (e.g. circular metal frame around the nest
hole entrance) will be attached to the nest, to
observe the parakeets response and willingness to
still enter the nest.”

The birds have had people out defending them, numerous newspaper articles have covered the killing, The Daily Mail pointed out that each bird was costing over £1,000 to kill, Back in 2011 the police even waded in and wrongly stated that it was illegal to photograph the APHA kill team. Astonishgly, it’s still entirely legal to import, rear and sell these birds, which doesn’t make any sense if the government are actually interested in stopping these birds from taking down our power stations, or whatever ridiculous reasons they have come up with.

We will continue to expose the people involved in the badger cull, something all these people should have been told when they went to work for the APHA. We have been threatened on numerous occassions by a number of different government departments to stop publishing the details of the people involved, we have completely ignored all those legal threats and will continue to ignore them.
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