"It is truly astonishing that the authorities have managed to tie the government's war on wildlife in with the continued war on our civil liberties" - Keith Taylor MEP

Green Party animal rights spokesperson Keith Taylor MEP has responded to the news police in the South West are considering using drones to monitor anti-badger cull protesters [1] by suggesting the plans are symptomatic of a wider crackdown on the civil liberties of environmental protesters. 

The senior Green politician, and Vice Chair of the European Parliament's Animal Welfare Intergroup, said:

"It is truly astonishing that the authorities have managed to tie the government's war on wildlife in with the continued war on our civil liberties. It is a malevolent act of authoritarian, anti-wildlife and anti-environment decision making. Not content with making badgers public enemy number one, the state is now wasting yet more taxpayers' money targetting those who have the temerity to disagree with the Tories' cruel, expensive and anti-science cull."

"It is gobsmacking that this news comes in the wake of 10,000 people joining the weekend's Walk for Wildlife [2], all of them urging the government to do more to protect our precious wildlife in the face of a terminal decline in Britain's non-human animal inhabitants."

The Green MEP for the South East previously condemned the government's plans to extend the badger cull earlier this month and called for an end to the 'scientifically illiterate and spectacularly expensive' programme [3].