England: Animal welfare activists brutally attacked by badger hunters
A gang of recreational hunters clearly intended to kill this brave man. He was very lucky to survive.
A lover of wildlife was brutally attacked and left for dead after encountering recreational hunters in the process of destroying a badger sett.
42 stitches to the head
The man from Manchester's animal welfare organisation was searching for badgers in the Little Lever area of Bolton when he came across five men with two dogs digging up a known badger sett.
The gang nearly killed him after beating him with tools. The victim required 42 stitches to his head and will need reconstructive surgery.
Badger baiting banned since 1835
Badger baiting, which was banned in 1835, involves setting vicious dogs on badgers. Typically, terriers are sent into a sett to attack the badger underground, while animal abusers dig down to the fighting animals with spades and crowbars.
Commenters on social media described the attackers as “psychopaths” and called for harsh penalties against them.
More on the subject of recreational hunting: In the dossier Poaching and hunting crime in Switzerland we document cases, legal questions and recurring patterns. The scientific evidence is presented in the overview Studies on the Effects of Recreational Hunting.
The position of IG Wild beim Wild: IG Wild beim Wild rejects recreational hunting. Our model is the canton of Geneva, which has managed without recreational hunting since 1974: without hunting seasons, without hunting dogs, without driven hunts, without high seats, without the animal cruelty and crime that go hand in hand with hunting season elsewhere. What has worked there for over fifty years disproves every position paper by JagdSchweiz. An association that bases its policy on claims it refutes in its own documents is not a professional organisation, but a factory for misinformation.
