A pet-lover captured the moment she challenged a contractor killing rabbits to make way for a new Metrolink extension.

Vegan Kim Wright is heard saying ‘what are you doing beating them with a spade?’ as she films the contractor working in Trafford Park on Friday afternoon.

The contractor tells her ‘we are digging them out’ with ferrets.

She can be seen picking up one rabbit from the grass and when she suggests it wasn’t dead - as the animal was twitching - the man replies: “Of course it is you stupid woman.”

(Image: Manchester Evening News)

He then grabs the rabbit from her and tosses it back onto the grass.

The RSPCA was called to the scene but told Kim that the cull was lawful.

Kim, 45, from Astley in Wigan , who has two pet rabbits of her own, told the M.E.N: “I love animals. I’m a vegan. But even for a meat eater, that was just wrong. It might have been lawful but it was morally wrong, cruel and barbaric.”

The accounts manager was driving through Trafford Park when she stopped at a roundabout at the junction of Ashburton Road West, Westinghouse Road and Parkway in Trafford Park and says she saw a man ‘hit a rabbit with a spade’.

She got out of her car and captured the subsequent encounter on her camera before sharing it on social media.

She told the M.E.N: “I drove round the roundabout and saw a guy holding a ferret in the air. I pulled onto the roundabout and approached him and asked what the ferrets were doing. It was then I saw the rabbit on the floor. To me it was clearly still alive. Another guy came along and threw it into the back of a 4x4.

“This is clearly going to continue to happen along that line. It’s crazy.”

The new £350m Trafford Centre Metrolink line is scheduled to be operational by 2020.

Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) bosses say they ‘investigated a number of options’ with their contractor, MPact-Thales, about how to remove the rabbits on Parkway.

(Image: Manchester Evening News)

They decided the best option was to euthanise the rabbits as moving them could cause them severe stress which they may not survive.

The agreed method was to use ferrets to chase the rabbits from their burrows and then wring their necks.

A TfGM spokesperson, said: “This is not a decision that has been taken lightly and is one, we accept, that may upset some people.

“Ultimately the decision was made based on sound advice and in accordance with relevant legislation.”