FOUR badger baiters have been banned from the whole of North Yorkshire and from keeping dogs after police ended their animal cruelty.

Fiona Newcombe, prosecuting, said the four encouraged a pit bull terrier as it savaged a squealing badger to death.

They also had a lurcher type dog with them and had travelled to the rural location on the edge of the North York Moors in the middle of the night.

York Magistrates Court heard that one of the group was filming what was happening.

Marcus Crosby, 25, Thomas Tyres, 20, Liam Parkinson, 26, and Brogan Smithson, 18, who all live in Teesside, all pleaded guilty to ill-treatment of a badger and causing unnecessary suffering to a protected animal.

“Some of you played greater roles, some of you played lesser roles but you were all in this together,” said district judge Adrian Lower. “You all knew what was going on and you all took part in this.”

The badger's death would have impacted the lives of other badgers in its neighbourhood, particularly if it had cubs, he said.

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He banned all  four men from keeping or owning dogs for five years, banned them from coming to North Yorkshire for 12 months and disqualified them from driving, also for 12 months.

All four were made subject to a community order for 12 months.  Crosby, of Laburnum Grove, Middlesbrough, Tyres, of Sidlow Road, Billingham, and Parkinson, of Victoria Terrace, Port Clarence, were ordered to do 150 hours’ unpaid work.

Smithson, who was 17 at the time of the badger baiting and who lives in a hostel in Stockton-on-Tees was fined £200.  Each of them must pay a £114 statutory surcharge and £85 prosecution costs.

Ms Newcombe said the badger baiters travelled to the rural location in a Jeep Cherokee in the early hours of May 12, 2023. The noise they made alerted members of the public who alerted police.

Officers located the group as they looked under bushes at where the pit bull terrier was savaging the badger. 

The badger was screaming and later died. The group broke up and headed for their vehicle as the police approached. Police confiscated both dogs.

Christopher Marley, for the four, said the owner of the pit bull terrier was not among the defendants in the dock. Parkinson owned the lurcher.

They had come to North Yorkshire looking for rabbits, but the pit bull terrier had jumped out of the window and found the badger.

The judge said he found the rabbit story “difficult to believe”.

Mr Marley said Parkinson worked in Newcastle and needed his driving licence to commute daily to his job.

Smithson had mental health problems that had led to him being sectioned under the Mental Health Act. His involvement was “perhaps peripheral” as he had been filming the badger incident.