Badger Baiters are sent to prison

Four men were sent to prison for four months for badger baiting at Scarborough Magistrates Court yesterday. Sentencing them, the judge said that people in Yorkshire would not tolerate such "abhorrent" and "barbaric" behaviour.

I have photographed badgers for years for my paintings and it was because I know these wonderful animals so well that I knew I had to investigate when, one sunny day last January, I heard a pack of dogs barking incessently. When I reached the scene I saw eight men, some of them armed with shot guns, and 13 dogs torturing a badger. It was broad daylight close to a public path, and some of the men were laughing. Two of the dogs were tearing and ripping at a badger, which hung suspended between them like a rag doll in a grotesque game of tug-of-war.

I took out my camera and photographed them and the photographs were used as evidence in the trial that followed.

The story was picked up by journalists from across the country and even got a mention on the BBC World Service. But most of the newspapers shied away from publishing the photographs. 

I've decided, in the interests of letting the world know that this medieval sport is still alive and kicking, to publish them here. Some of the images are quite upsetting. 

I took this photograph shortly after the men shot the badger that the dogs had been tearing apart. You can still see the smoke in the air.

This was the badger the police found at the scene after the men had been apprehended.

Three tiny, still pink, foetuses, and a torn-off badger's tail were also found lying on the grass nearby. Realising that the carcass of the badger we had found was not pregnant, we knew that there had been more than one badger killed that day.

We then discovered this hole, which had been hastily covered over with turf. Inside was a disemboweled badger sow. She had been pregnant with the three young foetuses.
It turned out that the men had sent a terrier fitted with a locator collar into the badger sett and this dog had conered the badger in its sleeping chamber. They had then known where to dig down to get the badger out of its sett and force it to fight the dogs.
What those men did was truly horrific.

Click on the words in blue to read the coverage in the national press. Judge condemns badger baiters The Daily Mail; badger baiters jailed after dogs tore apart badger The Mirror; Barbaric gang jailed for badger baiting, The Guardian