Old Etonian targeted by badger activists

The Independent/London

John Yorke can trace his family’s roots back to the Normans. Like his ancestors, 74-year-old Yorke farms the 3,000 acres of prime Gloucestershire agricultural land that forms the Forthampton Court estate. An Old Etonian and former High Sheriff of Herefordshire, Yorke reluctantly finds himself and his lands at the epicentre of the government’s highly controversial badger cull.

Opponents of the plan to use licensed marksmen to shoot badgers are focusing on the Yorkes.

Killing the largely nocturnal mammals will help curb the spread of tuberculosis (TB) in cattle, some experts argue. Badgers, they say, spread the disease from beast to beast and herd to herd.

Opponents dispute this and are intent on derailing a pilot cull that has been approved in Gloucestershire and is expected to start within the next 10 days.

Their aim seems to be to intimidate Yorke into withdrawing his support for the pilot, which, they say, is crucial to it going ahead.

Until now, Yorke has refused to speak publicly about the cull. He remains reluctant to talk, but in his first comments, made to The Independent on Sunday, he threw his support wholeheartedly behind the scheme.

“I don’t wish to make any points through the newspaper, except to say that 38,000 cattle are killed every year because of bovine TB. If each one is 8ft long, nose to tail, they would stretch from Piccadilly Circus in London to Radcliffe Square in Oxford,” he said. “That represents 50 miles of dead bodies and so I have given my approval to the cull,” he said.

Jay Tiernan, of Stop the Cull, said that Yorke’s background as a member of the “landed gentry” helped activists garner support. “We don’t want to be seen to be harassing smaller farmers; it looks like a big gang of yobs against some guy struggling to make a living,” he said. “We don’t feel uncomfortable targeting the landed gentry. What kind of criticism are we going to get for targeting someone who has 3,000 acres, whose heritage is a part of who he is, someone who went to Eton and then Trinity College? Who has sympathy for someone like that?”

Cull opponents believe “on good authority” that if the Yorkes were to pull out of the cull, the county’s licence would be revoked. Under government rules, the cull can take place only if landowners controlling 70% of the culling zone agree to the killing. If the Forthampton estate pulled out, the percentage would fall below the required level. There are around 700 saboteurs fighting the badger cull, 500 of whom are willing to trespass on property to disrupt the cull, according to Tiernan.

Some plan to patrol Forthampton, using LED flashing lights, loudhailers, vuvuzelas and flash cameras to scare away the badgers; many are prepared to put themselves between the badgers and the marksmen. They are also keeping those involved in the cull under surveillance and have put marksmen’s car details online.