Cancel the roll out of the Badger Cull in South Devon.

The Badger Cull in the South Hams has ended for this year, but of course we have three more years of this to endure, with a steady collapse of our ecosystems and employment from tourism. I shall deliver this petition to Natural England and the two South Hams MPs next week. Please get in touch if you would like to be there whenon the day. Thank you to everyone who signed this petition. I hope our MPs will take the time to read your comments and will act on the clear damage to the local ecology and economy their policy of wide spread badger killing is doing. In the meantime, I hope everyone in the South Hams can report any signs of wildlife crime against badgers in their area, as any shooting of badgers is now a criminal act until licences are granted next year. Gassing and poisoning are illegal all year. Without prosecutions for wildlife crime those who love killing will just carry on, so please, be vigilant for our badgers, and join South Hams Oppose the Badger Cull on Facebook too.

The more I think about the consequences of the Badger Trophic Cascade, the more I am convinced that this is a wilful act of Ecocide. The Government are well aware of the consequences as it was FERA which wrote the generic report in January 2011. Just because Government and Natural England are pretending not to know about ecological systems doesn't mean they have forgotten how they work. So in addition to killing the tourism industry of the South Hams they are also happy for a desperate and dramatic loss of biodiversity, just to keep the Countryside Alliance on board. I shall be flagging this up at the Public Memorial Service for the badger victims of the South Hams Badger Cull. Sunday 9th of October gathering at 11.45am at Totnes Market Square.

Thanks to another Freedom Of Information Request, today I have learned that Natural England appear to not have done a proper Ecological Impact Survey of the South Hams Badger Cull Zone, and have restricted their investigation only into the rise of the fox population in 21 SSSIs and European Protected Sites within the South Hams. Given that N.E. do know about Trophic Cascades thanks to the FERA report in January 2011 flagging up these issues, never the less they have failed to investigate the effects on our locality. Given that a Trophic Cascade as a consequence of removal of large numbers of badgers are particularly damaging in coastal regions, and half the South Hams perimeter is marine, this is a shocking error on the part of Natural England, and one with potentially dire consequences for our ecosystem, which in turn will later impact on our ecotourism too.

Thanks to a Freedom Of Information Request we have now found out how many gun men are roaming the South Hams looking for badgers to shoot. The South Hams is area 7 https://www.facebook.com/stop.the.cull/photos/pcb.915463335226035/915463128559389/?type=3&theater So we have 181 farmers licensed to shoot a supposedly protected species from sundown until noon for 6 weeks starting during the August bank holiday period, when our lanes and beaches are at their busiest. The total number of licensed gunmen roaming the West Country is 535, shooting day and night. It just shows how little this government cares about the income we get from tourism, to inflict this degree of threat and insecurity on our most popular beaches and countryside, just to keep the Countryside Alliance happy. A good example, if we needed one, of ideology lead policy trumping economics.

Today I have heard from a reliable source that there are school children in the South Hams bragging their parents have taken them out badger shooting! Just when you think the barbarity towards our wildlife and the disregard for the law and for public safety couldn't get any worse, they do. It seems form many reports I've been hearing there are a good many farmers who do not have licences jumping on the bandwagon and committing wildlife crimes. It is important these crimes are reported to the police, as without prosecutions we will see our badger population decimated by those who get a kick from killing. The long term ecological impact of this is severe, we will loose our ground nesting songbirds and our waders, and we will then loose the tourists who come to Devon to see our beautiful wildlife. This barbarity must stop! Please share this petition with as many people as possible, so we can send a good loud message to Natural England that we will not accept this. Thank you.

The impact on tourism is an important one as I have found our latest Devon Open Studios visitor numbers and takings now down to 1/20th of last years visitor numbers and earnings. Badger culls always start on an August bank holiday, and as businesses like mine rely on the summer tourist season to get us through the winter, if this goes on it could well put us all out of business. Other artists in the South Hams are also experiencing this problem, and the organizer for Devon Open Studios says the last three weeks has been dire for tourism. The same length of time as these badger culls have been running, as broadcast by the BBC. Crucially the BBC news on Radio 4 didn't mention where in Devon the badger culls would be rolled out, so many visitors may have been put off Devon as a whole, rather than South and North West Devon in particular. This is the most irresponsible act of vandalism to the West Country tourism industry I have seen in my lifetime.