Here are the facts. What we know about badgers today is through modern badger watchers. My old hero Ernest Neal have found quoted dogma. Every zoologist and naturalist reads Neal and his quotes (even if paraphrased) are everywhere.
I was still surprised reading a piece by a zoologist just last week that stated "we have no idea how foxes and badgers interact if they meet at night" -which is a quote often used but never attributed to anyone. In fact, field naturalists, badger watchers and fox watchers have known how they do/don't interact since at least the 1980s (likely further back than that just never recorded in (published) print). Badgers setts can be found in gardens alongside fox dens. Two people who have observed the badgers and foxes on their property for more than three decades note the two species sharing a sett -probably the fox using a now no longer badger used section.
There is even a report noting how a fox hunted in the 19th century ran into a badger sett where the badger "backed up" the fox until both were killed. The account is almost written as though this was a "known thing".
The question Neal and others since, basically because it seems that they preferred dogma to actual reading and historical research, have never answered is how wild cats never survived felicide campaigns; the Old foxes never survived vulpicide campaigns and neither did otters, polecats, hares, red squirrels and other species -the modern day extinction of the 1860s was fueled by hunting for 'fun' and profit. Luckily, these animals were all importable from Europe in their thousands (hence why the species tested all tend to have European species DNA).
But as badgers were subject to continuous melecide that wiped them out in large areas and I can find no information on badger imports how did they survive?
That answer is simple to come by and one I may feature in a post at some point.
All we know about foxes and badgers first appeared in Thomas Pennants 1771 book British Zoology. Some of this was reprinted in Thomas Bewick's History of Quadrupeds, 1790; Bingley's History of British Quadrupeds, 1809 and etc. etc. etc. This 'borrowing' from Pennant and Bewick continued on into the late 19th century after which, species being extinct which meant no one could see or hunt them, it was easier to jump to modern (1900 onward) dogma.
The Old fox types never existed despite the volumes of records of them as well as taxidermies because someone in 1970 had never seen one because by that time they had been extinct 100 years. When was the last time a naturalist/zoologist saw a living Dodo? They have not therefore the bird did not exist. Oh, they have the taxidermies, written descriptions and accounts ? Exactly my point. We have the same for the Old type foxes -so why is all of that ignored? No money in it likely and people who can quote dogma as fact rather than get their backside off a chair or away from a free lunch.
All we know about British wildlife, its extinction, re-introduction, re-extinction and reintroduction comes from hunting literature. The noble naturalist gathered information because that was useful in their hunting for 'sport' and specimen collecting. The every day, all year round life cycle was basically: where are the foxes; protect them until cubbing season then kill the cubs with hounds for 'fun' (you got a special invite to the 'fun'); after that leave the foxes left to roam free because that meant when hunting season started the foxes could give longer chases and how long a chase lasted was as important, if not more so, than being in at the kill.
That was it.
And now we see hedgehogs, badgers and other species, including the fox, heading for man made extinction once more. "A nation of animal lovers" is a chocolate box myth.
