The fight against the badger cull is being waged in the fields of Gloucestershire and Somerset – and also on global social media networks.
Thousands of anti-cull campaigners sent the tag line "badgermonday" to be the top trending phrase on Twitter yesterday, while the saboteurs who pledged to disrupt the cull have been using the social network to co-ordinate their actions.
Over the weekend, badger cull campaigners tweeted messages through the night outlining claims they were following vehicles they suspected of being driven by the marksmen who will be attempting to start the cull in Gloucestershire.
One tweet which circulated on Saturday night claimed that saboteurs had logged four different car registration numbers, and another speculated that those undertaking the cull were merely mobilising in the countryside to see the scale of the response from saboteurs.
The game of cat and mouse between the marksmen and the saboteurs looked certain to continue last night, with saboteur co-ordinators even tweeting the postcode of a meeting place just south west of Tewkesbury where they believed the cull was starting as darkness fell yesterday evening – with the instruction to wear fluorescent jackets and bring "something noisy".
Gloucestershire police have pledged to police the cull in a fair manner, but ensure that it does take place.
Meanwhile, an e-petition has attracted 240,000 signatures against the cull, organised by Queen guitarist Brian May. And in the House of Commons, Liberal Democrat MPs are being urged to join Labour by opposing the badger cull in a vote tomorrow.
Labour opposes the badger cull and will use their Opposition Day debate to raise the issue and try to divide the Tory-Lib Dem coalition over tackling TB in cattle. Some 5,000 badgers are set to be killed in "pilot" culls in west Gloucestershire and west Somerset, which were permitted to begin from last weekend. Badgers are credited with carrying the illness, which is rife in the South West.
Lib Dems have expressed more anxiety about the cull than their coalition partners. In October last year, MPs voted to abandon the badger cull – inflicting an embarrassing defeat on ministers who had already been forced to postpone the start of the policy. However, the Government was not legally bound by the vote and pressed on regardless. Eight Lib Dem MPs voted against the Government at the time – representing 14 per cent of the parliamentary party.
Ahead of the vote, Mary Creagh, Labour's Shadow Environment Secretary, said: "The South West is at the centre of this debate and I urge Lib Dem MPs to look at the science and reject the Government's crazy plans.
"We need a science-led policy to manage cattle movements better and prioritise badger and cattle vaccination to tackle bovine TB instead of a cull."
The Government says the scientific evidence and experience of other countries suggests that bovine TB will not be tackled without addressing infection in wildlife as well as cattle.
