Around this time each year, deep underground and amongst the comfort of their cosy nests, baby badgers are welcomed into the world by their doting mothers. When born, badgers weigh around 100g and are little more than 12cm long but these babies will grow up to be the fastest digging animals on earth, eating up to 200 earth worms a day. Amazing.

In around five weeks, their eyes will start to open and they will begin to venture out into the big wide world that awaits them, but little do they know of the dangers they may have to face.

Although a protected species, badgers have been persecuted year on year; trapped, snared and baited. The most recent, and shocking, violation against these shy and retiring animals is the Welsh Assembly’s proposed cull - a misguided attempt to reduce the incidence of Bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in dairy cows.

TB is a horrible, long-lasting and debilitating disease which can be transmitted to and by all mammals, including humans, but culling badgers to control bTB will not prevent its spread, infact it could make matters worse – and there is a wealth of information available to prove this.

Do you remember wise old Mr Badger from The Wind in the Willows? Although a cynical chap, he oozes common sense and in one particularly enlightening chapter of this children’s classic, when explaining to his good pals, Mole and Ratty, how he came by his extravagant underground quarters, he says:

"People come--they stay for a while, they flourish, they build--and they go. It is their way. But we remain. There were badgers here, I've been told, long before that same city ever came to be. And now there are badgers here again. We are an enduring lot, and we may move out for a time, but we wait, and are patient, and back we come. And so it will ever be."

In a few weeks time, I shudder to think of the badgers in Wales that could lose their home, their life. Please join us and oppose this unnecessary cull – all it takes is a few simple clicks.