Brighton Hunt Saboteurs are preparing to start disrupting the badger cull when its starts in Somerset again next week.
The anti-bloodsports group is calling for donations to allow it to join hundreds of other hunt saboteurs who believe the cull is ineffective as well as unethical.
A spokesman for the group said: “We have been going down to the Somerset cull zone regularly for the past couple of months to survey the badger sets.
“As the cull is expected to start again next week we will have people in Somerset working hundreds of other hunt saboteurs from around the country finding shooters and cages and neutralising them.
“Last year we made sure the cull was massively expensive and the licence had to be extended because they couldn’t kill enough badgers in the required time. The badger cull is expensive, unscientific, and unethical, the government should stop it immediately, but if they don’t we are even better prepared than last year to stop it ourselves.
“We are a broad range of people, there are some students, but most of us work. There is a nurse, a gardener and many others. The thing that unites us is a hatred of seeing wildlife being killed for profit or sport.”
The cull, which started last year, is intended to stem the rise of TB in cattle, and has proved highly controversial.
In 2013, it required a policing effort costing millions of pounds pulling in officers from many different forces, including Sussex Police.
It was branded a farce, with environment secretary Owen Patterson saying the government had changed the scope of the programme because “the badgers are moving the goalposts.”
The Brighton group has also started sabotaging hunts again, beginning with the Crawley and Horsham’s first cub hunt of the season yesterday morning.
Click here for more information about the Brighton Hunt Saboteurs.
