End the Badger Cull: The Protego Foundation’s Newest Campaign, Protect the Puffs

There are many lessons we can glean from the adventures of our favorite boy wizard. True friendship is a formidable force. Our future doesn’t have to be defined by our past. And we must stand up for what we believe in. 

Perhaps the most defining lesson in the wizarding (and Muggle world) is that empathy, kindness, and love are the most powerful and enduring forces in the universe. 

These compassionate forces are strong enough to cast their own kind of potent magic. When Lily Potter sacrificed her life to save infant Harry from Voldemort, it wasn’t rage or hate that was coursing through her veins. It was her love for Harry. A love potent enough to defy death. 

While we may not always agree on everything in the Potterverse, fans can all agree that killing is never the answer.

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Unfortunately, for thousands of European badgers in the UK, the British Parliament disagrees. 

Back in late August, the UK government went back on their promise to end their annual autumn badger cull. With blatant disregard for innocent lives, they expanded the cull’s hunting grounds to eleven new regions. For Hufflepuffs, who count the badger as their beloved emblem, this atrocity cannot go unnoticed.

​The Protego Foundation’s Protect the Puffs campaign demands the British government stop massacring badgers.

​Last year’s badger cull was the largest yet with the death toll amounting to 39,000 badgers. ​

Despite badgers having lived harmoniously alongside humans for thousands of years, hundreds of thousands of badgers have been slaughtered by the UK government for three decades. The rise in factory farming, particularly raising cattle in the meat and dairy industry, is what’s really to blame. 

This cold-blooded murder marks the government’s ignorant, misinformed attempt to “protect” cattle from strains of TB that European badgers are supposedly able to “infect” them with.

But here’s the thing. Scientific findings disprove this for what it is: a flimsy excuse to justify large scale murder. 

As the numbers of badgers killed in the annual culls skyrocket, so do the rates of TB in Britain’s cattle. 

The November 2020 Badgers Found Dead Study (BFDS) puts the overall rate of bovine TB-carrying badgers at just 1%. 

No, you haven’t been blasted with a confundus spell. 

An extensive 2016 study in Cornwall found that bovine TB is not passed through direct contact between badgers and cows. Furthermore, a 2020 update from The Badger Trust has turned the entire notion of the cull upside down. 

Scientific research has found that badgers are not a primary host for bovine TB as they have wrongfully been believed to be.

In fact, infected cows are more likely to spread the TB through other herds of cattle than wild roaming badgers. UK’s meat and dairy industry does more than just harm cows. It’s proven to be devastating to badgers who are wrongfully scapegoated by farmers and the UK government.

Postmortem studies also support this new, shocking discovery. 

A 2018 study in the “Southern Edge,” a culling region in the UK that consists of Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and Hampshire, found that less than 1% of badgers carry bovine TB in that area. 

There’s also conclusive evidence in the data from 2019’s Cumbria badger cull. Over three hundred badgers were killed, and only three badgers were found to test positive for bovine TB.

In other words, to truly combat bovine TB, the best course of action is to focus on cows, not killing badgers.

According to The Badger Trust, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advocating for badgers, badgers are “one of the most persecuted [animals] of all species.” As many as 30,000 badgers a year are subject to wildlife crime. This includes hunting, badger baiting, the large-scale destruction of badger habitats due to farming, and of course, the cull. 

Badger abuse happens to such an extent that police often have to get involved in putting an end to crimes against badgers. 

Culling badgers isn’t the answer. There is always another way.

There are several compassionate and intelligent solutions to curbing bovine TB without harming or slaughtering badgers. 

Setting up badger-proof fencing and other natural deterrents are effective ways to reduce the likelihood of disease transmission without killing thousands of healthy, and most likely, uninfected, badgers. 

Many of these physical fixes are inexpensive and don’t require special skills or equipment. 

Merely putting up sheets of metal and digging gaps by fences can be enough to keep badgers away from cattle. 

Farmers in Wales and England can even apply for no-kill badger sett relocation (setts are where badgers build their homes) in the case of recurrent badger and cattle incidents! 

Vaccinations are also powerful in curbing bovine TB rates without killing badgers. Although these vaccination projects only began in 2017, they have had a positive, three-pronged effect. 

1. They’ve been found to successfully lead to disease-free areas. 
2. They give badgers higher protection from catching bovine TB in the first place. 
3. And they provide security for wildlife in the surrounding areas. ​

​We’ll put it in the simplest terms: animal culls never work. 

In fact, they can and often do wage mass ecological damage.  Moreover, that damage can be irreversible. 

For one, the loss of badgers could also have a detrimental effect on bird populations. Without badgers, bird predator populations such as those of foxes, stoats, and weasels balloon, putting the lives of birds in jeopardy.

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Now, let’s do Helga Hufflepuff proud and take a minute to learn a little more about European badgers. 

Hufflepuff’s guiding values of patience, loyalty, and being unafraid of toil are just as applicable to the badgers who emblemize the House as they are to the students sorted into it at Hogwarts. ​

Badgers are incredibly hardworking. 

These stout, striped animals are known for meticulously tunneling out entire burrow systems called setts. Some setts have been found to span beyond 330 feet, or over half a mile. They can contain more than 30 different chambers, or rooms, with up to 40 exits and entrances. 

Badgers carve out these epic-scale burrows with only their steely front and back claws. With their wedge-shaped bodies, spade-like paws, and ability to plow through 55,000 tons of even the densest soil, it’s undeniable that badgers are truly unafraid of toil.
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Badgers are loyal. 

European Badgers are very social animals. They live in their setts with clans of anywhere from five to thirty other badgers. 

They are known for forging ironclad bonds with the other badgers in their clan and living together peacefully. Setts often hold multiple generations of badgers, and many have been in use for centuries! 

And if you thought Helga Hufflepuff was the only one to “take the lot, and treat them just the same,” you’d be wrong. 

Badgers have also been known to share their dens with other species of animals like red foxes. Interspecies den sharing isn’t common in many mammals, but European badgers are up for it!

Badgers are dedicated. ​

Badgers are exceptionally tidy and committed to maintaining that tidiness. They groom themselves daily and are devoted to keeping their setts in order. 

For one, each chamber is purposefully organized. Badgers express this in their dedication to maintaining their bedding. 

Badgers travel as far as 100 meters to gather bedding materials, from moss, hay, grass, and dry leaves to burlap from old feed sacks. The bedding is essential to regulate each chamber’s temperature, and both fends off the winter chill and lessens the summer heat. 

​Once the bedding materials have been gathered, shuffling backward, the badgers roll these materials into a giant ball and return to their setts.

They also “air out” their bedding, taking it out from each chamber, bringing it up to the surface, and laying it out before taking it back to each room, as often as once every ten days. 

If that isn’t dedication, we don’t know what is.
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​Badgers are also natural Herbologists! 

As they traverse the countryside through their tunnels, badgers spread seeds and other plant matter. This helps plants grow and keeps the land around them healthy and fertile. You could say that they have quite the green thumb! (Er, paw!)​

Over 100,000 badgers have been killed in the UK’s annual badger culls.  And that number is growing. 

​Dominic Dyer, chief executive of the Badger Trust, says that European badgers face the “largest destruction of a protected species in living memory.” 

Dyer says the killings have escalated to such a high that European badgers are actually facing “local extinction” in areas they’ve inhabited “since the Ice Age.”

So we ask you to stand with us and stand up for badgers. We need your help to Protect the Puffs! 

Whether you’re a Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Slytherin, or Gryffindor, we need you to join us to advocate for change and protection for European badgers. We need to ensure that there will be no badger cull in 2021.

Start taking action by signing these petitions. 

Then, use your voice (or your keyboard) to speak up for badgers by sharing their plight. Your friends and loved ones may have no idea that any of this is happening! Use your social media platforms to inform your communities about why badgers matter and why the cull needs to end. 

Lastly, consider buying an official Protego Foundation “Protect the Puffs” enamel pin. 
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50% of the proceeds of each limited edition pin goes to The Badger Trust to help them in their fight to end the cull and keep badgers safe all year round.

Further reading and viewing:

The Badger Trust is your premier online source for all things badger related. We highly recommend checking out their website to learn more about protecting badgers and what you can do to help. 

“Stopping Badger Crime” is a film from The Badger Trust that takes a no-holds-barred approach to showing the atrocities that badgers face. This unflinching portrayal of the abuse, although devastating, could make a big difference in advocacy for badgers. However, it is a very graphic film that may be distressing. Please exercise caution if you’re sensitive to witnessing animal abuse.
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Written by Protego’s resident Hufflepuff word witch, Victoria Tomis

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