GRANNY FALLS 300ft TO DEATH IN BADGER HORROR
Tragedy blamed on fleeing mammal
A BADGER frantically fleeing government- sponsored gunmen bundled into an 80- year- old grandmother – knocking her off a CLIFF.
Widow Edna Snopes fell 300 feet to her death on to a rocky outcrop on the Somerset coast – but the badger’s fate is unknown.
Technically her death – which happened last year but can only now be revealed – has been recorded as an “accident” as no foul play was involved.
But animal rights campaigners have highlighted the tragedy as a further example of the futility of the government’s pilot badger culls.
Marksmen were tasked by ministers to shoot badgers in a bid to stem the spread of tuberculosis in cattle.
It saw 921 badgers killed in Gloucestershire and another 940 in Somerset.
It was during the latter cull that the frightened badger crashed into poor Edna, fatally tipping her over the cliff edge.
Last week it was revealed that David McIntosh, on- off lover of Kelly Brook, had been fined after crashing a van full of dead badgers into a bus stop during the Gloucestershire cull.
Halt
The former Gladiators star, 28, had been hired to transport the animals in September last year.
Neither pilot effort managed to kill the 70 per cent of the badger population said to be needed to make the cull effective.
On Thursday MPs voted overwhelmingly to halt the culls.
A spokesman for activist group Animals Mean More said: “If it wasn’t for this Tory- led government’s bloodlust, Edna would still be with us today.
“But at least let’s hope the badger still is.”