An activist dressed in a badger costume staged a protest in Witney against the government's badger cull.

Debbie White, manager of the vaccination and rescue project at Oxfordshire Badger Group, sat under the Buttercross in Witney's Market Square with placards saying 'I am sad' and 'Oxfordshire's badger shame'.

The group, a charity affiliated to the Badger Trust, are opposed to the culling of badgers which, the government says, will prevent the spread of bovine TB.

Oxfordshire Badger Group tweeted: "Witney was the badger's stop off today. The badger cull is far from over. In fact there are plans that could see the cull changing to epi culling where 100% of badgers in some areas will be wiped out."

This is Oxfordshire: Oxfordshire Badger Group

Epidemiological culling means that if local vets cite badgers as a likely source of infection culling can be licensed.

They urged people to write to their MP to "demand the cull comes to a complete end".

Ms White has also staged protests in costume in Oxford and Banbury, and took part in a 50-strong protest outside the House of Commons last week.

She said: "We are going to do a pop-up protest once a week until the cull starts in September just to remind people that the cull is still going on. Some people think that it was a one-off."

Badger culling began in Oxfordshire in 2020.

She said: "It started with one zone called Area 49 - we do not get told where these areas are. Then in 2021 they added Area 61, a second zone. In 2022 we had a zone three, Area 69."

In 2022 the group said 1,371 badgers were culled in Oxfordshire and at least 33,627 were culled nationally, according to the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA).

Ms White said: "We do not know whether there will be another zone added in Oxfordshire this year but they can come back and add new land to the existing areas if landowners want to join the cull.

"It's a four-year licence so this will be the last year for Zone 1 but there is a caveat - they can add two years of supplementary culling."

Some farmers' organisations and DEFRA are in favour of a policy of badger culling because of the costs of the disease to farmers.

This is Oxfordshire: Debbie White of Oxfordshire Badger Group protests against culling

Cattle testing positive for a bTB test must be slaughtered and the farmer paid compensation.

Ms White said it was down to individual landowners whether they supported culling as they would be approached by the group offering vaccination as well as by Defra.

"It's down to the landowners which way they want to go," she said. "Or they can choose to do nothing, which is fine."

She added: "Bovine TB is a cattle disease which spreads from cattle to cattle. The chances of badgers having it in the first place and passing it to cattle is minimal.

"The clue's in the name."