It was a crisp midwinter Sunday when the screaming started on Paradise Farm. Robert Fuller, a well-known wildlife artist, was looking for otters while strolling with a friend by the River Derwent, North Yorkshire, close to the historic site of the battle of Stamford Bridge. Hearing squealing and a volley of barking, he quickened his step. When he peered through the hedge where the noise was coming from, he struggled to take in what he saw.
Two scarily large dogs, "like something out of Harry Potter", were covered in blood and violently shaking a badger. The badger was emitting a distinctive chittering, the sound of a wild animal in great pain and distress. Several terriers raced around, snatching a bite as the dogs played tug-of-war with the badger. Most shockingly of all, a group of men stood in the field watching. One encouraged his dogs to attack the badger. Others laughed and joked, excited by what they were seeing.
Fuller had stumbled on a badger bait, an illegal fight in which dogs are pitched against badgers dug from their setts. This has been illegal since 1835 but this was 2011, in broad daylight, on a Sunday afternoon close to a public footpath. Despite being the kind of anachronistic barbarity most people assume went out of fashion with the Victorians, badger baiting persists, amid an apparent resurgence of cruelty in the countryside. Animal charities report a surge in poaching and lamping – using powerful lights mounted on pickups and vans to chase down hares, rabbits and deer at night – but also more exotic torture. In Blackburn, the theft of 15 cats in one neighbourhood has been attributed to the growth of "cat coursing", in which domestic cats are pitted against fighting dogs in a bloody battle that, like badger baiting, the smaller animal cannot hope to win. In Scotland, cats have been placed in wheelie bins with dogs and left to fight to their deaths. The growth of lamping and badger baiting are two priorities for the National Wildlife Crime Unit, which provides intelligence and investigative support for police forces across the UK.
There is one connection between these varying forms of illegal cruelty: dogs. Mark Randell, a police officer for 30 years, is now intelligence co-ordinator for the League Against Cruel Sports. He says those who commit such crimes are not obsessed with hunting hares or digging badgers. The prey is almost incidental. "The criminality revolves around the dog and what the dog can do – 'My dog is tougher than your dog. My dog can kill foxes and badgers and deer'," he says. "The dog is a vehicle for the individual and their criminal mind."
The "Harry Potter"-style dogs unleashed in the North Yorkshire bait were bull lurchers, a relatively new cross breed blending the speed of a lurcher with the strength and aggression of a pit bull or bull mastiff. These killing machines are now being used by poachers to attack foxes, hares and have even been spotted bringing down red deer. "The upsurge in bull cross lurchers has been phenomenal in recent times," says Geoff Edmond, the RSPCA's national wildlife co-ordinator. "We're getting a lot more lamping of deer, badgers and foxes. The old way of badger baiting was just using terriers. Now they are going out in gangs and throwing them to the bull cross lurchers. There's probably a lot more that goes on than we know about." Badger baiting was once quite a technical "sport": now it is more commonly a case of going lamping and seeing what you get – a bull lurcher can pull down pretty much anything.
There is currently little data on lamping but according to Operation Meles, a police and charity partnership to combat badger persecution launched this autumn, there were 243 reports of badger fighting in 2009 and 2010. The RSPCA recorded 355 incidents of badger persecution, including illegal snaring as well as digging and baiting, across Wales and England in 2010, compared with 255 reports in 2009.
Despite the 1835 law banning dog fights with other animals such as badgers, baiting continued for decades as an unruly village tradition, remembered by the poet John Clare, who celebrated the badger's tenacity in verse:
He falls as dead and kicked by boys and men / Then starts and grins and drives the crowd again
Villagers would go badger digging on a Sunday afternoon after church, badgers were kept in barrels in pub yards and tested against dogs and were even hunted by moonlight in Somerset in the late 1940s. In 1973, the badger became the first animal in Britain to be given specific legal protection and since then the law has been tightened: in Scotland the badger enjoys greater legal protection than anywhere else in the world with a maximum prison sentence for baiters of three years. Despite these laws, the 610 reports of badger persecution logged by the RSPCA led to just 16 convictions.
The contemporary persecution of wild animals, like other criminal activity, is increasingly planned and celebrated on the internet and social media. "The use of mobile phones in filming what is going on at badger setts and the number of images found on home computers is staggering," says Ian Hutchison, a former police officer who is the UK crime prevention lead for Operation Meles. Where once illegal cruelty was the preserve of discreet chat in country pubs, participants now boast about their dogs and their fights online – euphemistically referring to badgers as "pigs" and "pig fights" and posting graphic pictures of their trophies. Making contacts across the country, they travel widely to participate in dog fights and badger baits. Social media has "definitely made this criminal activity easier," says Randell. "The lack of regulation means people can do what they want online but that kind of openness gives us more information as well."
When Northumberland police seized Wayne Lumsden's mobile phone in an unrelated investigation last year, they found video clips of dogs fighting other dogs, cats, foxes and badgers. The 23-year-old from Lynemouth also posted footage on his Bebo page. Lumsden, and Connor Patterson, also 23 and from Northumberland, who had exchanged text messages about his enjoyment of a badger bait, were sentenced to 21 and 16 weeks imprisonment in February last year. A month earlier, Christian Latcham of Tonypandy, south Wales, was sentenced to five months' imprisonment, suspended for 12 months, after extensive photographs and videos of badger baiting were – again, by chance – found on his phone.
The men seen by Robert Fuller baiting a badger did not broadcast their activities online but they were brazen in choosing to set their 13 dogs on badgers in daylight close to a public footpath. They were also unlucky to be spotted by an unusually acute witness. Baiters caught in the act are the tip of the iceberg, say the authorities, and some witnesses are too intimidated by these gangs to give evidence. Fuller, however, had grown up on a farm and had tackled hare coursers in the past and knew "they are difficult lads to deal with". Although he was hopelessly outnumbered, he had his 400mm lens with him and the presence of mind to wriggle through the hedge and surreptitiously take photographs. Police were called and quickly arrived at Paradise Farm.
What they found shocked the most experienced of wildlife crime investigators. The body of the badger Fuller had seen being tortured was discovered shot dead. Another heavily pregnant sow with its intestines ripped out had been dumped back in the hole the men had dug to get to the badger sett. Strewn across the field were four tiny foetuses torn from the badger's stomach, still freshly pink. The tail belonging to a third badger – torn off by the dogs – was also found; its carcass was never recovered.
Jean Thorpe, a local badger expert who rescues injured wildlife, was sent to examine the scene. She saw how the men had deployed a locator collar on a terrier and encouraged it to enter the badger sett. Once the terrier had cornered a badger underground, the men could sweep a receiver box over the ground to identify exactly where it was, before digging straight down to the badger with one hole. "The sett was beautifully dug [out by the men]. They knew exactly what they were doing," says Thorpe, who appeared at the men's trial at Scarborough magistrates court. It can be surprisingly difficult to prove in law that someone intended to "wilfully" bait a badger: those who are caught usually claim their dog accidentally caught the badger or was trapped in the sett and they were digging it out, or they were digging for foxes. In this case, however, the evidence of more than one dead badger looked damning. "We needed two. One can be a mistake, two cannot," as Thorpe put it.
Six of the men protested their innocence, arguing in court it had all been a mistake and they had simply been on "a rough shoot – pigeons, crows, foxes, stoats, weasels, anything vermin", as the oldest of the men, Richard Simpson, a 37-year-old terrier lover who trained as a gamekeeper, put it. One man was found not guilty but a district judge last month found five of the six, Simpson, his half-brother Alan Alexander, 32, William Anderson, 26, Paul Tindall, 31, and a 17-year-old who cannot be named, guilty of wilfully killing a badger, hunting a mammal with dogs, digging for badgers and interfering with a badger sett. Two others, Christopher Holmes and Malcolm Warner, both 28 and from York, pleaded guilty before the trial began. The seven men, who were all friends, will be sentenced on 10 January.
W hat kind of person goes lamping or sets their dogs on wild animals? Those who bait badgers may kill foxes as well but they are rarely members of the red-jacketed hunting fraternity or the licenced shooters who go deer stalking. Louise Robertson of the League Against Cruel Sports says there is no link between the ban on fox hunting and the resurgence of underground "sports" such as badger baiting. "It's a very different kind of person who is doing your dog fighting and badger baiting. Hunters are obsessed with the sport of hunting. The badger baiting and dog fighting tends to be lower classes of people involved with criminal activity who are doing it for sick pleasure," she says. Thorpe agrees. "I know it's not politically correct but it can be a housing estate thing," she says. "Country people do it quietly. You don't tend to catch them. The housing estate people tend to be gobby and shout about it and that's how you find out."
Six of the North Yorkshire baiters came from York, and four lived close to each other on a council estate. Although Simpson trained as a gamekeeper, the men seemed more enthusiastic about their dogs and 4x4s than the countryside. One of the group, Anderson, is an entrepreneur who specialises in customising Land Rovers with dog boxes and secure compartments. Tindall is a former bouncer. While these men are not exactly a rural underclass, Randell thinks there may be an economic dimension to this pursuit of illegal thrills in the countryside. "It's a cheap way to spend the weekend," he says.
According to Ian Hutchison of Operation Meles, some of the increase in the persecution of badgers in particular is connected to their unpopularity with the farming community because of bovine TB in cattle. Until there is a cull, some people are taking the control of badgers into their own hands. But the setting of dogs on them is a different kind of killing. "It's a macho thing, to be honest," says Hutchison. "It's, 'I'm a big guy with a big dog.' There are some organised fights from time to time where the badgers are taken away from the setts and pitted against dogs and there is betting. And once you've got betting you've got organised crime involved."
"Those who commit cruelty to animals are more often than not linked to something else criminal," says Randell. Sergeant Paul Stephenson, the officer who investigated the bait at Paradise Farm, agrees, although he stresses he is not talking specifically about the men who were there: "We have a poaching problem but they tend to be what they call long dogs chasing hares. We have a problem with people taking deer but that's at night with a rifle. North Yorkshire police have become more robust with it all. We've started to go after them. One of the reasons the police are so interested in poaching, apart from trespassing, is that quite often people are suspected of going into outbuildings on farms and stealing equipment, tools, diesel and metals."
Most of those involved in wildlife crimes believe the current increase is due not to a contagion of cruelty but to the growing courage of witnesses such as Fuller to report such vicious acts. But animal charities are alarmed by the recurring presence of aggressive new breeds such as bull lurchers, which slip through the legal net in England and Wales because the dangerous dogs law bans only specific breeds such as pit bulls. To stay relevant, this law must be constantly amended to control the emergence of new cross breeds. Far better, says Randell, is the Scottish approach, where the law on fighting dogs criminalises the deed, not the breed.
When Fuller remembers that day in January, his skin still crawls with the horror. Although he makes his living from painting wild animals, Fuller is no bunny hugger. "I've got a shotgun certificate, I'm used to country life, I've seen a lot of things, but they were laughing as badgers were having their insides torn out by these dogs – and badgers are as tough as old boots, our toughest wild animal left," he says. Fuller is just glad to see that, for once, justice was done. "I cannot abide these people. You've got to stand up to it. It's unbelievably cruel."
Comments
3 January 2012 9:16PM
I've been informed that it was the grey seal in 1914 that were the first animal given legal protection in the UK - see correction at bottom of this post.
3 January 2012 10:42PM
A horrible despicable practice. What else can I say? All my normal objectivity goes out the window when I read something like this and I'm filled with disgust and anger.
3 January 2012 10:57PM
Massively non pc here but it is weird how a normally peaceful, easy going, law abiding person like myself has the thought pass through his head of throwing a hand grenade into the crowd of people who would watch such a thing.
3 January 2012 11:02PM
No, I apologise unreservedly for my previous post. It was very stupid. Replace hand grenade with stink bomb.
I wish for an edit function.
3 January 2012 11:05PM
Lowly men, who cannot begin to measure themselves to nature's most humble creatures.
3 January 2012 11:09PM
The brutal killing of wild animals just for 'fun'. What kind of perverted people need to get their kicks this way? Oh, yes... this kind.
3 January 2012 11:15PM
So what exactly are the alleged qualitative differences between badger baiting, hare coursing and fox hunting? Or is the difference only in the 'classes' of people who entertain themselves by tormenting and killing animals in these various ways?
3 January 2012 11:16PM
Most psychopaths begin with animals. This kind of thing brings out the Daily Mail reader in me. Lock 'em up and throw away the key.
3 January 2012 11:16PM
Government e-petition to stop the Badger cull
Link to e-mail your MP about the badger cull
3 January 2012 11:22PM
Only utter tossers would behave in this way.
We coexist very happily with the local badgers. We even seem to have reached a urine based understanding whereby we mark our patches and leave each other to get on with living.
I absolutely hate the tw*ts who are carrying out these incomprehensibly cruel acts. And, irony aside for a moment, I'd have no problem setting a few bull lurchers on'em.
3 January 2012 11:26PM
While we're at it:
Government e-petition for "Harsher punishments and jail sentences for Animal abusers"
3 January 2012 11:26PM
How about we lock them naked in a room with enraged badgers? Sounds about right to me. Hope they chew their particulars off.
3 January 2012 11:27PM
yeah right like the Tories are gonna back that. The same party that wants to pointlessly cull badgers and is looking to repeal the ban on fox hunting.
4 January 2012 12:15AM
This story is so saddening, I mean what kind of sick b@stards would do this. It makes my blood boil when people are cruel like that. These people are low life scum, sad and pathetic.
I love animals x
4 January 2012 12:38AM
Oh, I don't know ... I was nodding in agreement at your original post.
4 January 2012 12:51AM
Badgers repulse me. As do all monochrome animals. But badgers in particular: Nasty. Brutish. Short. The Kray twins of the woodland folk.
4 January 2012 12:56AM
Having said that, it would seem churlish to have them ripped apart by dogs. I would merely indicate my feelings with a well-timed social snub, a la Downton Abbey. (Or, for the educated amongst us, a la Saki.)
4 January 2012 1:06AM
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4 January 2012 1:11AM
Thank you for writing this article, even if it is sad. The link to the stories about cats being stolen is also terrible.
I can't help but think that far harsher prison sentences ought to be passed against those who torture animals this way.
Has anyone else noticed now how many people are wearing fur? Often just small bits on a coat. And wearing it shamelessly. Those who are not easily shocked ought to see the videos online of Chinese fur farms where the animals are tortured and skinned alive. I doubt the people I see wearing fur in England realise the almost unbelievably painful death their choice of clothes has caused.
4 January 2012 1:41AM
There's also considerable cruelty in the way the aggressive dogs are trained and treated. Even with Staffies, you see moronic boys teaching them how to bite and tear at things and turning them into mindless fighting toys rather than proper dogs.
As for the badger baiters, one can only hope that the 'bull lurchers' will one day turn on their owners.
4 January 2012 1:44AM
Would it help calm everyone down if I lit a josstick, or something?
4 January 2012 2:01AM
It has been proven that people who torture and kill animals this way often move on to people. Locking them up might just be an effective preventive measure.
4 January 2012 2:08AM
It sounds convincing. But before we go down the whole Minority Report route of preventative incarceration, would you be so good as to link to the proof?
4 January 2012 2:38AM
Sorry I phrased it wrong, murderers often begin with animals and then move on to people. Late night comments should be avoided.
Anyway I think it was an article from the New York Times. I tried to find the article but now that you have to pay for any article after the 20th... And it was so depressing I didn't keep it. But promise, it did exist, and promise, it was based on scientific evidence.
4 January 2012 2:50AM
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4 January 2012 3:12AM
Badgers are welcome in my world. Baiters are not. May the two never meet.
4 January 2012 3:17AM
So if these baiters gave their pastime a more euphemistic name than "killing", and called it a sport, it'd be fine then? Sorry but I completely fail to see the difference. The only reason killing badgers with dogs is more illegal than killing foxes is because the people who used to make our laws (maybe still do) enjoy the latter. Both are activities done for sick "pleasure". In my mind they're equally abhorrent, and I say this as someone who's lived my whole life in the country and studied rural land management. The "country ways" line is no more an excuse for animal cruelty than "city ways" is an excuse for gang warfare.
It's a shame this article only briefly touches on other reasons for the killing of badgers, though. This sort of torturing-for-fun is still very much a rare and isolated activity, but killing and scrubbing out of badgers by farmers and landowners is common across the country. I'm sceptical of the effect of badgers on rural economies, be it through bovine TB or other impacts, but clearly farmers whose finances are on a perpetual knifedge will try anything they can to improve their lot. This article talks a lot about the rural lower class, even the rural underclass, but the root of that is that rural Britain has long suffered from chronic underinvestment, and a slow transformation from a worked and managed environment to a playground for the rich. Underlying every rural issue in modern Britain is the need to revive the countryside as a place for the ordinary man.
4 January 2012 3:37AM
@fistofonan, Erda24
Here's one reference work, citing a number of sources: http://www.animallaw.info/articles/arus113pennstlrev649.htm
"Numerous studies, however, have proven that animal cruelty can *653 easily lead to violence against humans."-- See e.g. works cited at FN 30 on that page
"Empirical research has shown that children who are particularly cruel to animals are far more likely to engage in violent behavior toward other children." See FN 35
“Aggressive acts against animals are an early diagnostic indicator of future psychopathy, which, if unrecognized and untreated, may escalate in range and severity against other victims.” See FN 22
The NY Times article Erda is thinking of is perhaps this one:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/magazine/13dogfighting-t.html?pagewanted=all
"The link between animal abuse and interpersonal violence is becoming so well established that many U.S. communities now cross-train social-service and animal-control agencies in how to recognize signs of animal abuse as possible indicators of other abusive behaviors."
4 January 2012 4:03AM
TomSwift, the barbarous activities that are the subject of this very sad article are the point here surely so please don't indulge the self serving nonsense of Master Bates
4 January 2012 4:25AM
Not my intention to indulge anyone's nonsense. A comment and then a question were posted regarding a connection between cruelty to animals and cruelty to persons. Whatever the intention of the posters, the point seemed relevant, in general on such topics, and particularly in this instance as considerable space is given in the above article to the conduct and character of the human perpetrators and spectators.
4 January 2012 4:30AM
Thoroughly upsetting. One can wish nothing but harm on the perpetrators of this sort of thing. Disgusting individuals.
4 January 2012 5:07AM
The difference between fox hunting and badger baiting may be lost on some and am sure many would say its semantics-but the point made in the artcle is accurate-fox hunters by and large enjoy the culture of hunting to hounds-the nice clothes, jodphurs , the horses, the drinking, the pointless braying-the death or otherwise of a fox is not a neccessity-i aint defending it but thats the reality. The baiting described above relies on the extreme cruelty of dogs being pitted against animals-that is the whole and final point. Hound packs still go out-be it chasing scent trails or foxes. Baiters do not bait without a badger to kill. Neither are my cup of tea-but the sort of mindless shit kicker that digs outs badgers to let their dogs attack is ussually best avoidednat anybstate of the tide. And as for bull lurchers etc-these dogs have been around for years-staffies and bull breeds formed the basis of long dog crosses in the victorian age-and most long dog owners of any knowledge always wanted a bit of bull in the cross-whippet/staffie/sheepdog/whippet being one of the best known rural rabbit hunting crosses for a century of more. The core issue is the extreme cruelty here- i have witnessed rabbit control using dogs in my youth- by people who knew what they were doing and were hunting for the pot/game dealer supply. Killing of any animal for fun is a dastardlynand dim crime that should be punished to the dull extent of the law.
4 January 2012 5:34AM
1) I half agree with you - but only because 'hunting' has survived the fact that hunting foxes is now banned. I don't see it as an argument for allowing people to hunt foxes again.
2) A local farmer has also had trouble with someone from a council estate taking his dog out specifically to kill sheep.
3) Time for dog licences again? It's not mentioned whether these people have been forbidden from keeping pets. I would hope so.
4 January 2012 5:53AM
Neither do I- was making a point about the motivations of participants in both activities-neither of which I agree with as foxes are more effectively controlled by licensed FAC holders who know what they are doing- if one accepts they need controlling. As for hunting with dogs- i still think there are circumstances-rabbit and rat control for instance-when dogs are the most effective and humane method in the right hands. I, like most people i know who do partcipate in what are loosely called country pursuits absolutely abhor the breeding of and use of dogs for mindless cruelty. So yes-big fan of dog licenses and at a proper cost-say 25 quid a year-which is less than a bag of dog food so no well intentioned owner would complain.
4 January 2012 6:21AM
These people have no place in society and need to be locked away to receive psychological treatment. It's a national disgrace scum like this walk our streets.
4 January 2012 6:51AM
don't beat yourself up Stevetyphon.
4 January 2012 6:54AM
bit harsh DyslexicAunt. TomSwift was brining up a valid point. Nowt wrong with that.
4 January 2012 6:57AM
Fair point.
4 January 2012 7:02AM
I've got the police coming round this mornng. On Monday I watched as a 'traditional' hunt worked methodically to wipe out the fox population around the village where I live. They used a combination of fox-hounds to chase and kill, and terriers and servants to dig out and kill foxes who had gone to ground. I have some filmed evidence though it's difficult to get - these people own our countryside and they keep people away while they carry out these crimes, however on this occasion they were careless and I could se them from the road.
Thing is, where I live in Essex is almost entirely arable. There's simply no way that foxes are ests or vermin - they hardly eat the barley and oilseed rape that is pretty much all that's grown here. The whole thing is just for fun - nothing more.
So I'm afraid I disagree completely with those who draw a distinction between the thug on a housing estate who takes a pitbull out to torture badgers and the city banker who goes out to torture foxes. They're just the same.
4 January 2012 7:04AM
Agreed
4 January 2012 7:40AM
The message trickles down. If fox hunters are allowed to get away with it because of their relationships with the local magistrates why not some other sadistic, bloodthirsty scum?
4 January 2012 8:07AM
And a very helpful response it was too. If any locking up is to happen, I'd still be more inclined to lock people up up the crimes they have committed, than the crimes they haven't. But that's a political and moral position some people struggle with, I'll grant you.
4 January 2012 8:13AM
Though, if we were incarcerating individuals, on grounds of revulsion and suspicion then I'd lock up the badgers. And magpies. And killer wales. And zebras. I just don't like the cut of their gib.
4 January 2012 8:13AM
If they want to be out in the fresh air can't we send them to Angola or Kosovo to clear landmines or cluster bombs or something? Scum.
4 January 2012 8:15AM
Let's face it - most of the human race is completely evil.
Disgusting.
4 January 2012 8:16AM
In principle, the idea of reintroducing dog licences seems sensible. However, the first thing one has to do in order to get one is actually have an emotional attachment to your dog (ie you would weigh up the risk of registering it v. having it removed and potentially destroyed), then you need to be law-abiding, then you need to have a life that isn't so chaotic that you don't forget to renew it annually. Then, in order to keep your dog, you would need to not engage in illegal activity with it (which is pretty much the case without a licence anyway).
In the end, hundreds of normal, law-abiding dog-owners will fork out for licences. Criminals will continue to flout the law and take their chances. If their illegally owned dog is removed and destroyed... they will just get another.
4 January 2012 8:16AM
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4 January 2012 8:17AM
Further to my last post... this activity is sickening, and I am not endorsing it whatsoever... I am just pointing out the problems of law enforcement....
4 January 2012 8:20AM
Because sad as it may be, we like to kill defenceless animals in this country...
The Countryside alliance portrays it as "Promoting the interests of rural people, including all field sports (hunting, shooting, fishing, falconry, ferreting, coursing, stalking)"... ie. 'sensible wildlife management'...
Most civilised people describe it as 'sport and entertainment that involves violence against animals'... ie. 'Blood Sport'...
4 January 2012 8:24AM
Such 'humans' do not deserve life.