David Hammond highlights the need for wildlife police teams assigned to protect Britain's most protected mammal (Letter, February 22).

I wonder how many readers appreciate that the badger's most dangerous enemy is currently our own Government?

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rual Affairs (Defra) has have initiated a consultation period which will expire on March 10.

Until then, we have the opportunity to fight a proposal to carry out either a partial or total cull of this much-loved creature.

The justification is because they argus the badger is responsible for an increase of bovine TB.

The Government's scientists assert culling badgers is not the answer and that greater emphasis should be placed on movement and testing of cattle and improved farming practices.

If the cull goes ahead, the proposal is to exterminate badgers by snaring, gassing or shooting them, which will undoubtedly cause enormous pain and is, in the main, barbaric.

Snaring and gassing can cause a cruel death to other innocent animals, as either method is indiscriminate.

Family pets may be caught in snares, as well as foxes, rabbits, hares and other small mammals which share setts with badgers.

We have done what we can with our somewhat limited resources to draw public attention to the proposal, including arranging for 50,000 leaflets to be distributed across Sussex.

The bottom line is that our children and grandchildren may grow up robbed of the chance to see this popular mammal. They could read Wind In The Willows without ever seeing a live badger.

If, like the members of Badger Trust Sussex, you care about and want to protect brock, please write immediately to your MP and to Defra, objecting to the cull.

David Hammond quite rightly refers to the legal protection of badgers. Badger-baiting is illegal and cruel to the badger and the dogs involved but, in terms of numbers of deaths, it pales into insignificance compared with the widespread suffering which will be caused if any form of cull is permitted.

-Pat Hayden, secretary, Badger Trust Sussex,