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Breaking

Assessment launches to appraise UK wildlife and forest crime legislation and enforcement

Huddersfield man admits stealing 200 wild bird eggs

Police and NWCU find 80 alligator heads in West Midlands house

Police Scotland launch third phase of Year-Long Wildlife Crime Campaign focusing on Bat Crime

Poachers handed hefty fines after they admitted hunting with dogs in Wiltshire

Court appearance in North Yorkshire for men charged with poaching and COVID-19 offences

Men stopped by North Yorkshire police poaching patrols sent home with COVID-19 penalty notices

Buzzard found shot in Horseheath, Cambridgeshire

Milton Keynes man pleads guilty to offences relating to rare animal skull

Six arrested on suspicion of hare coursing offences in Hungerford

Hare coursers drove over farmer’s crops in Cambridgeshire, causing hundreds of pounds of damage

New lead for National Wildlife Crime Unit

Carlisle men given Covid-19 Fixed Penalty Notices and investigated for poaching offences

Wiltshire Police's quick response after reports of two separate hare coursing incidents

Nottinghamshire Police begin investigation into killing of wild birds

New Scottish wildlife crime investigator appointed for NWCU

Deer hunter in PSNI who had carcasses in cold-room at home fined £6k

Another satellite-tagged hen harrier has disappeared in the Yorkshire Dales

Police patrols stepped up to tackle poachers travelling into North Yorkshire

PAW Northern Ireland launches Badger Persecution Report 2016-2018


Home / Animal of the Month / Badger

Badger


badger0486LCampbellBadgers have been much in the news recently because of the cull areas in Gloucestershire and Somerset.

But badgers have problems other than being culled – they are frequent targets of a strange and violent breed of men who dig them from their setts after locating them with terriers, and subject them to extreme cruelty before eventually killing them.

Badgers are also coursed with large dogs, often bull lurchers, and suffer the same fate. They are sometimes deliberately snared, and their setts may occasionally be damaged by agricultural, forestry or development operations. It is hardly surprising then that badgers have an Act of Parliament all to themselves: The Protection of Badgers Act 1992.

Away from all this grief, badgers are extremely social animals, living in family groups, usually in a main sett with a number of extra, smaller, setts within the family group’s territory. In many cases the main sett – a network of underground tunnels with numerous entrances – will have been used by many generations of badgers. The spoil heaps dug out to create and enlarge the tunnel may contain tons of earth and occasionally the bones of long-dead badgers.

badger17bA typical badger ‘clan’ may contain a dominant male (boar), one or more females (sows) and usually some younger family members.

At an active sett there are likely to be well-worn paths leading from some of the entrances, perhaps to another outlying sett or to a gap through a fence or hedge. Paw prints, rather like those of a small bear, might be visible at the entrances, and there may be bedding brought out to be aired since badgers are exceptionally clean animals. Latrines, small pits dug by the badgers into which they deposit their dung, are often found near to the sett. These are covered over when full and a new latrine is dug.

Badgers are omnivorous, with a particular love of earthworms, bulbs and autumn fruit such as berries and apples, but they will readily eat cereals, nuts, birds’ eggs and dead animals and birds too. They frequently eat young rabbits in a burrow, digging right down on top of them rather than digging from the burrow entrance inwards. With their varied appetite they are not the best visitor to a vegetable garden, though this is most likely to occur during extended dry periods when earthworms are not available to them.

When breeding, badgers, like some other mustelids (and, unusually, roe deer) have ‘delayed implantation’. Badgers can mate at any time of the year but the embryo does not start growing in the womb until winter. All cubs are therefore born around the same time, late January to March. There are usually two or three cubs in a litter, which don’t start to emerge from the sett till late April/early May. Occasionally a fox may use part of the sett to have cubs, so it is possible to have badger cubs and fox cubs in the same sett. Unfortunately foxes with cubs are dirty neighbours, leaving parts of dead rabbits and birds around outside, so are not the most welcome of tenants.


  • NWCU & Police Press Releases

    • Three Kent men jailed for hunting and killing badgers,...
      September 28, 2020
    • Rural police operation to make North Yorkshire a no-go...
      August 21, 2020
    • Appeal for information after analysis reveals buzzard...
      July 24, 2020
    • North Yorkshire Buzzard killed by combination of four...
      May 27, 2020
    • Man charged with Raptor Persecution crimes in Stewartry
      April 9, 2020
  • Wildlife Crime Press Coverage

    • Assessment launches to appraise UK wildlife and forest...
      March 2, 2021
    • Huddersfield man admits stealing 200 wild bird eggs
      February 28, 2021
    • Police and NWCU find 80 alligator heads in West Midlands...
      February 25, 2021
    • Police Scotland launch third phase of Year-Long Wildlife...
      February 25, 2021
    • Poachers handed hefty fines after they admitted hunting...
      February 6, 2021


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