How Cool are the badgers don't you just love them........

Other animals in the Mustelids, include weasels, stoats, otters, polecats, martens, pine martens and skunks.

How can you not love these?  They are just like little bears. They are full of character and fun and make fantastic viewing for those fortunate enough to get a glimpse of them. They are both striking visually and fascinating to watch. They have strong family ties and some setts have been recorded in the same place for over 300 years. They are very territorial and will protect their area from other badgers,.They are very clean animals and clear out their home daily and even have their own toilets.  Badgers can live in a setts and one family can have up to 15 badgers. They sometimes have winter and summer quarters. During the winter they can spend days at a time underground sleeping. They are a really tight community and protect each other well from other badger groups known as clans or cetes. They will play with each other and this helps strengthen their ties. Badges are one of the few creatures to have delayed implantation. This means they can have their young when they choose. Sound pretty good to me. Badger are rarely seen during the day.

The dominant male of the clan or boar will fight to maintain his status and if challenged by alower ranking male will fight aggressively to hold hid position. This fight will often end up with one of the badgers leaving and they will start their own clan. The characteristic ear and bottom bitten males will occasionally take refuge in hedges in the first instance before digging a sett. their powerful bodies and long claws make this easy work.

Badgers live in woodland areas but often appear in the garden looking for food. They are creatures of habit and often take the same route on nightly outings. Their main diet is earthworms and these can often be found on pastures. They scratch the grass for bugs, grubs and larva that lay just below it's surface and have no respect for a well turned out lawn. They have been known to remove fences to get back into a garden. Such a determined action can only be in pursuit of food. Badger are omnivores and will eat cereal based dog food, meat, peanuts and fruit.   Badgers are creatures of habit and if food is left regularly they will come to expect it and can be nuisance if you stop feeding

As with all our wildlife they are scared of humans and know to flee but can be observed from hides and often houses where food is laid to interest the badgers.

In 1997 a survey estimated that there are about 50,000 social badger groups.  Accounting for approximately 310,000 badgers.  It’s estimated that 10,000 to 20,000 badgers die at the hands of diggers.  Badger baiting was banned in 1835 but still exists today in many areas. It estimates some 30 - 40,000 get killed on the roads each year.

Badgers in your home

Anyone interested in the re-locating injured badgers or providing homes for orphaned cubs should contact us to discuss further. Badgers can be encouraged into your garden and synthetic setts can be built, these are used in relocation situations. Contact us for more details and advice on badgers

Injured Badger

If you find an injured or abandoned badger please contact a vet or your nearest wildlife rescue immediately.  If you have a trapped badger do not approach it in a confined space they can be very aggressive and have very powerful jaws..  A small cub can give a very nasty nip so be careful too if you need to take it to a vet or wildlife rescue you will need a safe strong box or ask a rescue center to collect.

Badger Rescue and Rehabilitation

Each year we rescue and rehabilitate badger cubs and successfully release them back into the wild where they belong. We carefully survey and monitor any release sites to ensure that the area can accommodate a badger sett. we must ensure we don't interfere with the balance and that the sett is placed a determined distance form extisting established setts. We are fortunate to have the support of some large landowners. We establish a location for next years setts this year to ensure all cubs have a home. We have been very successful in our release programs and our on going monitoring.

This information not only helps us to understand badgers but also gives us valuable information to improve our ongoing programs. There is a balance of care and duty to ensure these secretive and protected mammals are not only "human weary" but also have the ability to defend themselves from other badgers and are able to forage well. Our strict program allows for both. Not only is it successful but it is extremely rewarding. If you have a sick injured or abandoned badger cub please contact us on 0795 508 0901.

Badgers are very sociable and need to be kept in groups. When a cubs arrives with us we always try to ensure he has some playmates. Below shows the first cub of the season joining in with a small group of fox cubs. Badgers and foxes get on well and in the wild foxes have been know to have cubs in parts of the badgers sett.

Building and Badgers

An occupied badger sett may be found on the proposed site for a road or housing.  To avoid later problems, developers should carry out surveys with the local badger group, wildlife trust, or ecological consultant before seeking outline planning permission.
Providing tunnels under roads, artificial setts, roadside reflectors, badger gates and fencing can help reduce the impact on the local badger population when areas are developed.

Badger Cull

From 1998 to 2005, Defra killed nearly 11,000 badgers as part of the Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT, also known as the Krebs experiment). At the time it was reported that the badgers were being culled to eradicateof bovine TB (bTB) in cattle.

The results of the RBCT was to reveal whether or not badger ‘culling’ actually worked as a means of controlling the disease in livestoke. It concluded thats whilst TB droped within th area it incresed outside th zone.

See full report

http://www.defra.gov.uk/foodfarm/farmanimal/diseases/atoz/tb/isg/report/final_report.pdf

In June 2007 the Independent Scientific Group (ISG) published its Final Report.

In his foreword, ISG Chairman Professor John Bourne wrote:

"After careful consideration of all the RBCT and other data presented in this report,
including an economic assessment, we conclude that badger culling cannot meaningfully
contribute to the future control of cattle TB in Britain. "

The UK badger cull had been dropped in favor of the more cost effective, scientifically sound and logical option of vaccinating However in Wales the Welsh Assemble have given the go ahead to trail cull and that has started and is expected to last five years. In the Uk the New Coalition government has decided to cull in the Uk instead and has stated this in their manifesto. We are waiting for conformation on a time scale.

Brian May on the Welsh Badger Cull

There is no science, logic or morality to back up this cull.

It is incredible in this century that we are killing wildlife based on myths and gang mentality. We are losing creatures from our planet through ignorance. We all have a responsibility to address these issues and ensure that no more creatures will be wiped out or persecuted.

BBC News - Queen guitarist Brian May joins fight over badger cull
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/8560156...

Below From Brian May after meeting R woodroffe and K Donnelly

Thu 10 Jun 10
AS OF TODAY IT'S OFFICIAL "CULLING BADGERS WILL NOT BENEFIT FARMERS"

Does this sound familiar?

"The culling of badgers can make no meaningful contribution to cattle TB control in Britain”.

This was the conclusion of a 10-year ISG (Independent Scientific Group) study funded by DEFRA, costing 500 million pounds, in which 11,000 badgers were sacrificed.

I’m processing and collating the material we were able to get from our meeting with R Woodroffe and K Donnelly yesterday – authors of this experiment, and the two recent, widely quoted, updates. There is much to discuss, and it’s quite complicated – needs putting carefully into clear layman’s terms, which is not their job, of course; their job is to report their findings to the scientific community, and to DEFRA who funded the research, over a period of 10 years, plus follow-up work.

But the following is perhaps the most important issue of all.

I asked Woodroffe and Donnelly a very simple question. I asked – “If you were revisiting the original ISG report, in the light of the new finding - if you were rewriting the paper with ALL the new evidence available, would your conclusion be any different?

They replied without hesitation -

“The conclusion is exactly the same.

THE CULLING OF BADGERS CAN MAKE NO MEANINGFUL CONTRIBUTION TO THE CONTROL OF BOVINE TB IN CATTLE THE UK.”

I asked if I could quote them on this … and they replied “Yes, absolutely.”

Now the reasoning behind this took me a while to understand, but I will try to communicate it in a subsequent note. The gist is this: the two recent new points on their graph of long-term beneficial effects of culling badgers as function of time after the experimental cull ceased, indicate different long-term shapes of the curve. The first point seemed to indicate that the long-term effects reverted to zero. The new point indicates that there might be a resurgence of the effects. This has been seized upon by some sections of the Press, and by the NFU in the Farming Press, to indicate that, contrary to the conclusion of the first ISG report, it will be a viable option to cull – a cost-effective way to eradicate the Bovine TB problem in cows.

The important thing is THEIR conclusion. These are the ONLY people in this country who can offer scientific evidence that is real, and not hearsay. The next point on their graph will arrive in August. It will likely be the decider point, as to which of the two recent points is most significant. But it is clear that if farmers are putting their trust in a programme of culling to take the problem of bTB out of their lives … they are being seriously misled.

Cheers
Brian

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