A husband-and-wife team have formed a national pressure group to stop badgers being snared.

Jaine and Simon Wild, from Bognor, founded the West Sussex Badger Protection Group in 1990 and have now joined forces with the West Sussex Wildlife Protection Group to form the National Anti-Snaring Campaign.

Tomorrow they will travel to Downing Street to hand over a petition, signed by 60,000 people, to ask Prime Minister Tony Blair to put a stop to the "silent killing".

Mrs Wild said: "We've been working on the campaign for years. What really pushed us into action was a snared badger on the Goodwood Estate, near Charlton.

"It had been strangled by a snare and had a year-old injury where it had escaped from another trap and this had fractured its breastbone and left a dreadful scar.

"Lord March subsequently wrote to all his shooting tenants asking them not to set snares again on the Goodwood Estate."

Norman Baker, MP for Lewes, has backed the campaign and is putting an Early Day Motion before Parliament on the snaring issue this week.

Mrs Wild has just launched a web site at www.antisnaring.org.uk