We urge members of Oxford University's Scientists Department of Biology and the authors of Randomised Badger Culling Trial to break their silence and tell DEFRA to end the cruel and ineffective badger cull. Your science has been misused to justify killing many thousands of badgers in Oxfordshire alone. Nationally, nearly a quarter million - half the population - has already been lost. Data from over a decade of culling confirms your original conclusions –that culling badgers does not help control bovine TB.

DEFRA has U turned on plans to end the Badger Cull. It wants to introduce ‘Epidemiological Culling” (Epi-Culling) which aims to kill ALL badgers in large areas around new herd breakdowns. This could lead to local extinction of badgers across much of Oxfordshire and elsewhere. Culling could continue indefinitely because of the industry’s failure to focus on controlling the disease through more effective cattle measures.

Over 60% of Oxfordshire is already part of the badger killing zones. New epi-cull zones are expected to be created under the new policy. Oxfordshire - a heartland for badgers over the centuries – could see them driven into local extinction. We cannot allow this travesty.

Culling originated in Oxford University. We believe YOU have the scientific authority to end it.

Please, Please speak out before it is too late.

DEFRA’s consultation ENDED on 13th May  2024.

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Note: This petition was first presented as part of an open letter to senior scientists at the Oxford University School of Biology and to the authors of the Randomised Badger Culling Trial others in April 2024. 

We presented it again on 18th July 2024. An important new research paper has been published demolishing their original badger cull trial findings. The new government will soon decide whether to continue the cull. With the petition at over 50,000 signatures we renewed our call for them to speak out against culling. Please see our new update of 19th July 2024.

Oxfordshire Badger Group’s Open Letter to Oxford University Scientists (April 2024)

Many of you helped design, coordinate or were otherwise involved in the Randomised Controlled Badger Cull Trial (RBCT) and related research from the University of Oxford. You concluded that the available scientific evidence showed that badgers caused around 50% of bovine TB breakdowns during a rising epidemic but that culling badgers would not help control bovine TB.

Yet the government simply overturned your conclusions to justify introducing badger culling.  Many of you vocally opposed this in 2012 and 2015 but you were ignored. Now 250,000 mostly healthy badgers are dead.

The scale of the badger cull is immense, yet 10 years of culling has, as you predicted, made no meaningful difference to bTB infections in cattle. Blaming badgers is not helping farmers - better herd-based measures and in particular, proper testing is needed.

Now is the time for you to again speak out about this urgently. DEFRA’s flawed consultation to enable ‘epidemiological culling’ threatens the future of bTB control. Licences would allow ALL badgers to be killed in response to bTB herd breakdowns at the request of the government Chief vet. Culling might continue indefinitely and beyond 2038.  

Our largest native ominvore could face localised extinction, having been demonised and persecuted again in England as never before by the findings of the RBCT.

You told us last autumn and more recently that Oxford’s Biologists have ‘no appetite’ to step up. IS that still the case when so many lives depend on YOU to put the record straight? Badger culling started in Oxford and you could help end it here by letting the world know it should not be continued.

Please tell DEFRA that it must stop the badger culls now, and not begin targeted culling. By remaining  silent at this critical time, you may allow the badger cull to continue indefinitely.

There is a saying “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good men do nothing.” We will be asking the people of Oxford and the media to hear our pleas in the next few weeks. Please, please be a vocal part of the opposition right now and have appetite for change, as in the past.

Oxfordshire Badger Group

Registered Charity (England and Wales) 1186850. Full member of the Badger Trust