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SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

You will be sad to hear that Lesley Schofield passed away on Monday after a prolonged illness.

Some of you may have never met her but Lesley was a mainstay of South Yorkshire Badger Group for many years, taking on secretarial duties and producing our quarterly newsletter which was widely admired by badger supporters locally and throughout the national badger community.

Following an earlier illness Lesley overcame her difficulties and resumed her duties for five more years with never a complaint and with the same calm efficiency as ever until it became impossible to continue. Despite the differing views naturally associated with meetings I never heard a word out of place from Lesley. By nature she was a quiet unassuming person who would listen and take in everything then go away to do exactly the right thing for the benefit of the group and the badgers she loved dearly.

Lesley will be sorely missed by all in South Yorkshire Badger Group and our thoughts are with her husband Peter at this sad time.

The funeral will take place at Grenoside Crematorium North Chapel at 2 pm on Tuesday 28th August followed by a reception at Cubley Hall.

Peter has requested no flowers but donations can be sent to Cancer Research Yorkshire.

For catering purposes anyone wishing to attend should PM me on facebook or use our contact on this site.

Before you read on, please note that our funds for protecting badger setts are running low so we have opened a Gofundme page at

https://www.gofundme.com/badger-sett-protection-work

There are already donate buttons on other pages of this website, and you can donate direct to our bank without fees deducted, at

(HSBC) Acc. No. 91379763 Sort code 40-41-08

We have also publicised our campaign on YouTube at,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzUjgZtn9fc (or search for South Yorkshire Badger Group)

This will help people understand what badgers are going through and how we help them.

We will place reminders on our facebook page as well, so nobody escapes! Why not donate by all three methods? I'm sure the badgers will be very grateful!!!

END OF GROVEL.

Welcome to South Yorkshire Badger Group.

We are a registered charity (No. 1039884) and affilliated to Badger Trust.

We are dedicated to the welfare, conservation, study, monitoring and public awareness of badgers.

We liaise with police, RSPCA, wildlife organisations, councils, planners and individuals with regard to badger issues. We can offer advice to members of the public on badger related matters.

We provide physical protection for vulnerable badger setts and fight against badger baiting.

We campaign against the badger cull and stand against snaring of any animal. Up-to- date information can be found in our 'New Stuff' page.

Following last year's badger culls, the West Dorset cull company applied for an extension, we don't know why. They then exceeded the maximum target by a wide margin. Natural England obligingly moved the target upwards. In Cornwall the opposite happened. The target was missed by a mile so NE reduced the target. Abracadabra, the culls were a complete success! You couldn't make it up.

Killing the right number of badgers is supposed to be of critical importance, according to the government. Falling short of target, risks increasing the spread of TB in cattle. Exceeding it risks local extinction which would not only be unethical and unacceptable to a large proportion of the population, it would infringe the terms of international conventions to which the UK is committed.

It's clear that nobody, not the government, not 'Natural England', not the farmers, not even badger protection campaigners who have surveyed huge areas of private land and know where the badgers are, have any accurate idea how many badgers there are. They don't exactly line up to be counted. The culls are a farce with no grounding in reality. A sensible government would accept reality and abandon them in favour of measures which might actually work for cattle farmers and taxpayers alike.