ANIMAL rights activists toured Gloucestershire in a bus this week to try and highlight the issue of the badger cull at the county council election.
Animal Aid opposes the trial shooting of badgers which are due to begin in parts of the county this summer in a bid to combat TB in cattle.


So it has teamed up with Gloucestershire Against Badger Shooting to ensure the cull remains at the forefront of the issues in the run-up to the elections on May 2.


The two groups are members of Team Badger - a coalition of almost every animal protection organisation in the country all of whom are committed to stopping the badger cull, which is due to start in Gloucestershire sometime after June 1.
The team’s ‘battle bus’ started its tour in Quedgeley at 10am on Friday, April 19 before travelling to Coleford and Lydney and then Tewksbury and Cheltenham on Saturday.


While in Quedgeley team badger parked the bus in the Tesco Extra car park . However the organisors had not asked for permission to use the car park and therefore the manager of the Tesco store off Bristol Road asked them to move and eventualy called the  police in order to endure their departure from the site.


A sign reading, ‘badgers have friends…and those friends have votes’ appeared on the side of the black and white painted bus.
Jeanne Berry from Gloucestershire Against Badger Shooting said: "All the political parties in the county council elections are against the cull, apart from the Conservatives.


"We are therefore asking our supporters to contact the Conservative leader to ask them to change their minds before the election."