Eleven badgers died after a drug-laced apple was
allegedly hurled into a sett ‘to murder them.’
The bizarre incident happened after a sharp-eyed villager saw a youth throw the contaminated apple into the "protected" badger sett in Chilmark.
The villager went to the sett and found the apple cut in half with a tablet carefully wedged in each half – and called Wiltshire Wildlife Rescue.

The police inquiry had hit the buffers after Natu-ral England and Wiltshire Police both refused to pay for the tablets to be analysed.

Furious Wiltshire Wildlife Rescue boss Phil Groom-bridge demanded the tablets be sent to him and he would personally pay for them to be tested by a vet. He would inform the police what the tablets contain. “The tablets in the apple were put there to murder the badgers – that’s obvious.
This youth has done this before but this time he was spotted.

“Eleven badgers have been found dead near the sett since the apple was left and there are no marks on any of the badgers. “This is a cover up by the police and Natural England". The whole thing stinks.

If a child had come along and picked up the apple and eaten it, there would have been a murder inq-uiry. I am fuming that neither Natural England nor Wiltshire Police will pay for these two tab-lets to be analysed. “Nobody cares about the welf-are of badgers – they are a protected species,” said Mr Groombridge. Wiltshire Police said the cost of analysin the two tablets was down to Natu-ral England. “They are pharmaceutical so we can’t do it,” an officer said. Natural England sta-ted: “Because the tablets are not an agric-ultural chemical, it is not down to us to pay for the cost of analysing them – it is for the pol-ice.”

Wiltshire Police were trying to find the tablets to hand them back to Mr Groombridge who had a vet on hand. The police spokesman later added: “If there is criminal activity we will pursue it.” Meanwhile, the row over bovine TB and its link to badgers continues led by dairy farmers.