The earliest badger remains found in Britain date back to circa 250,000 years, while remains found in a cave system near Cheddar date back to 60,000 years ago. Badgers are known as one of the fastest digging (faster than even a fox) animals in the world. Setts can be hundreds of years old with many having been occupied for many generations; and one in Derbyshire is even mentioned in the Domesday Book.
There are many urban badger populations due to the fact that villages used to have local badger setts and as cities have grown, Bristol being a good example, so those villages become part of (districts in) the City. Cars do take their toll on badgers and The Bristol Badger Deaths Register tries to record as many of these as are reported. Apart from a small number of mild mange cases badgers appear to be doing well though there are natural illnesses.
Although rarely eaten today in the United States, definitely not in the United Kingdom badgers were once a primary meat source for the diets of Native Americans and European colonists. Various body parts were also used in ‘medicines’ and the hides used for clothing and shield coverings and Scottish sporrans also used badger fur. The badger was not unique in being killed for fur and meat as the fox also shared that fate -in some areas of France fox meat was still being eaten into the late 19th century.
From a book on the uses of animals:Universiteitsbibliotheek Leiden, BPL 1283 (Herbarius/De medicamentis ex animalibus), folio 53r
The badger was also killed for ‘fun’ later on and the German Dachshund was bred to hunt badgers. Hunts at one time trail-dragged using a badger or domestic cat they had killed with the hopes that the smell of the blood would later be followed by an inquisitive fox. In baiting the badgers teeth would be smashed or its lower jaw severed to allow the dogs a good attack and kill while providing the badger with no way to defend itself.
At one point badgers (like otters, polecats and other mammals) were wiped out in the North of England and with local parishes offering what at the time was good money to kill adult and cub badgers it was a very profitable pastime.
In A vertebrate fauna of Lakeland : including Cumberland and Westmorland with Lancashire north of the sands by Hugh Alexander MacPherson, 1892, there is a section headed The Destruction Of Wild Animals and he write:
“Badger
“Under the title of ‘Brock,’ this interesting but ill-used animal figures in the lists of the victims of our hill-men with tolerable frequency, though the Kendal tale of slaughter is at present unsurpassed. There are certain holes on Orton Scar known as ‘ Pate holes.’ The elder Gough offered the comment a century ago, that ‘ Pate’ was an obsolete name for the Badger. After searching many folios of parish accounts, often difficult to decipher, I have at last discovered this name in one of the books of Penrith parish. It occurs as far back as the year 1658: ‘payed for Killinge a ffoxx £00, 02s, 06d. payed for killinge of two paytes, £00, 02s. 00d.’ The irony of fate compels me to withdraw an unlucky remark, made on p, 42, that 1741 is the first date at which I have found the name of ‘ Badger’ applied to Meles taxus in Lakeland.’ It appears to have been first recognised locally towards the close of the seventeenth century.
“The Dacre parish book contains an entry,
‘To Lancelot Holme of Penerath [Penrith] for Killing of a badger, £00, 00s. 06d.’ This payment was registered in 1690.
“Seven years later, in 1697, the Penrith wardens made an entry of their own:
‘To John Salkeld for a Badger Head, £0, Os. 6d.’
“The Barton parish book includes an entry made for the Chepelry of Martindale in 1706:
‘To Mich. Tyson and Tho. Cookson for killing of two wild Cats and a badger, £0, 3s. Od.’
“In 1715 an entry occurs in the Barton parish book:
‘To Lord Lonsdale’s Huntsman for a badgher, £0, 1s. Od.’
“In the Dacre parish the word ‘Brock’ continued to be used in preference to the term ‘ Badger’ for the first few years of the eighteenth century, a remark that is equally true of Barton; but the modern term soon supplanted the older synonym. The records of Badgers butchered in Dacre parish between 1685 and 1750, a period of sixty-five years, yields a total mortality of thirty six individuals, This includes an entry for the year 1736, in which the chronicler records the death of ten of these harmless creatures in a single year.
“Perhaps the saddest feature of this exterminating policy lies in the fact that no mercy was shown even to the tender young. Among the disbursements of the churchwardens of Dacre for 1694 you may read this shameful entry: ‘Imprimis for 6 Brock heads 4 old and 2 young, £00, 05s. 00d.’ The Barton book is equally guilty in asserting the slaughter of such innocents. In 1731 it records, ‘One old Badger, £00, Ols. 00d., 3 young Badgers £00, Ols. 00d.’ The same thing recurs in 1732 : ‘ 3 ould Badgers, £00, 03s. 00d., 2 young Badgers, £00, 00s. 08d.’ Truly a ‘ pittisome’ affair this !”
McPherson adds a note:
“Professor Skeat says that in Middle English [1200-1460] ‘ this animal had three familiar names, viz., the brock, the gray, and the bawson, but does not seem to have been generally called the badger’ (Dictionary of the English Language, p. 47). He adds that the name is a sort of nickname derived from the Middle English badger or bager=‘a dealer in corn.’ This fanciful origin is verified by the fact that the French equivalent ‘ blaireau’ is derived from the French b/é, corn.”
It is interesting that even the ‘great sportsman’ Sir John Colquhoun described badgers as inoffensive and of no harm -he did, however, as a good father let both of his sons each kill a badger so that they got the fun of it but then banned any badger hunting.
Other historians note how great a job the locals had done in eradicating badgers, wild cats, etc. from the Lakelands/Cumbria. It was all “proud work” and praised. Badger-baiting was not for a gentleman but, if the fox was not about chasing a badger would do. In fact, by the 1860s hunting and bounty work had seen that the old Greyhound, Hill and Cur foxes were extinct as were wild cats and many other species including red squirrels. The 1860s marks the peak period in the “Golden Age of Hunting” and the only way it could continue was with the yearly importation of more foxes (mainly from Europe), red squirrels, deer and so on. Wild cats hybrid or otherwise were also moved around the “shooting areas” where people purchased a licence and expected to get in some ‘fun shooting’ and this we have no just taxidermy evidence of but also contemporary accounts going up to the 1930s.
There were no laws protecting badgers so how was it that the species survived when melecide, like felicide and vulpicide were a daily thing? It always puzzled me and I even looked at the possibility of badgers being imported but so far have come up with no records of this. In fact, the reason why badgers survived I came across quite by accident in 2022 while scouring newspaper archives for Old fox and Old wild cat reports.
Fox hunting, which wiped out the three original Old British fox types and wild cats and also introduced mange to the UK...saved badgers.
“As to mange, it is certainly very rare in the west country, which may be due to the number of badgers who keep the earths clean.”
The fact that badgers shared setts with foxes in some parts we know of from old accounts as there is even a story of a fox darting into a badger sett when hunted and the badger fought the foxes sent down to get it. Having spoiled the hunt’s ‘fun’ badger and fox were killed. Ignoring the silly theory as to how mange starts this 1898 item hints at badgers imported into fox hunt territories to keep fox dens clean going back a good way.
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I llustrated Sporting and Dramatic News - Saturday 24 April 1897
The above 1897 article shows that badgers were being caught and sent to areas to prevent mange outbreaks and mainly into woodland where they would establish territories last into the 21st century.
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Hampshire Advertiser - Saturday 27 August 1932
There is no exact location given for the “Island” but Hampshire has Hayling Island or next over the Isle of Wight. The interesting fact here is that it is noted that badgers were again imported but I suspect far from being there to exterminate wasps that the reason was, again, mange control. Although hunts did everything openly amongst “their own” when it came to the press rather than be blamed for a ‘problem’ (ie importing badgers to make foxes healthier to hunt) some other reason was always created.
It is possible, based on the various news snippets and hints by ‘sportsmen’ that the practice of importing badgers into fox hunting territories went back to at least the mid 1850s. And yet, as we note in the 1932 item, a “bit of sport” hunting badgers was still going on. How they became a “plague” of badgers is difficult to see but Australia uses the same term today for any animal it wants to kill off -they are always “a plague of”.
In the UK badgers are supposedly a protected species: 1973 CHAPTER 57.An Act to prohibit, save as permitted under this Act, the taking, injuring or killing of badgers. C3By Criminal Justice Act 1991 (c. 53, SIF 39:1), s.
Also Badgers and badger setts (burrows) are protected under the Protection of Badgers Act 1992, in England and Wales.
Badgers survived everything over the centuries and only returned to some areas as part of anti mange action. Protection did not last long as some very flawed ‘science’ quickly made them the scapegoat species (as recognised by other countries) for Bovine TB. In fact from the very outset naturalists were pointing out that bad animal husbandry was to blame for outbreaks; other countries recognised that badgers were not the main source of bTB and any number of wild animals can carry it.
Most people know that from 1977 on (still occasionally) I am an exotics wildlife consultant for UK police forces. In that capacity I had to talk to shooters and game keepers in order to complete reports.
It was via the conversations that I learn all the ins-and-outs of night time shooting. It was also from all of this that made me warn, in the 1990s, that the UK fox population was in decline -in some areas foxes had not been seen for 6-9 months and once any turning up were killed ....no more. I asked how they were making their money then? "Oh, no foxes the rabbit population booms and farmers don't want that so we shoot a ton of them and present them to the farmer who can see we've done our job and we get paid."
I also heard of farmers and estate owners paying "good money to snuff badgers" To which was added "on the quiet though". Now why, if these people knew I worked with police forces would they tell me this? Because they knew private land and no evidence and no one really interested in investigating meant it was all done scot free. There are things that I have heard and been told that concern me.
We are always given the number of 250,000 badgers having been killed in culls and after so many years I doubt that figure. Shooters brag about the cull payments having helped purchase houses and expensive lifestyles. DEFRA:
"1.3 Costs and benefits of extending the current approach to a further 11 intensive culling areas
"Each new cull area is expected to deliver net benefits of between -£0.49 million and -£0.04 million per area, with a central estimate of approximately -£0.16 million. This includes costs accrued over 4 years of culling and benefits accrued over 11 years in line with results from the Randomised Badger Control Trial (RBCT).
"The future costs to UK government are estimated at £0.33 million per area over 4 years.
"Previous versions of the VfM analysis included costs incurred by farmers who are prepared to use their own money to fund culls. These have not been available for this and the previous version of the VfM analysis and are therefore excluded.
"The total monetised benefits are estimated to be around £0.01 million and £0.29 million per area over eleven years, with a central estimate of £0.16 million. This is based on the results of the RBCT."
They like to say benefits and give percentages to hide things as officials always do. How much does bovine TB cost the government?
"bTB eradication costs UK taxpayers around £150 million per annum, with additional costs falling to the cattle industry. More information can be found at TB hub - Bovine TB Advice & Tuberculosis Information for Cattle Farmers."
https://aphascience.blog.gov.uk/2023/03/24/tb-day-2023/
One shooter bemoaned the fact that "You get nothing for the nippers (cubs)"
Badgers in the UK are recognised by zoologists across Europe and elsewhere as "scapegoat species". Protected in 1973 and not long after "kill them!" So people are making good money and there is very limited financial burden on the farmer. Remember that badger clans that have been monitored for years with no sign of TB in tests and nowhere near cattle were also slaughtered.
The figure of 250,000 does not include many cubs -bodies are bagged up and disposed of. Watching the talk online and hearing back from other interested parties I was told by one that "People don't care. The badger huggers would s*** a brick -250k is a laugh!"
So how many seems to be a likely number?
300,000
Which is well over half the badger population in the UK and we have no idea how many cubs because "they don't count". If we consider that an estimated 100,000 die on UK roads then it can be seen that the UK badger population is on its way to extinction -which it avoided after centuries of hunting. Yes, hunting never killed off badgers when they were not protected but as a protected species they are being openly slaughtered.
Now we know that the UK government and politicians in voting farmers pockets have declared badgers are to be eradicated (exterminated) from large areas of England)
Former UK Prime Minister R. Sunak actually declared that he wanted badgers eradicated.
Many voters desperate to see the environment and wildlife, and particularly badgers, saved took the solemn promise of Labour Party leader Keir Starmer and Steve Reed MP and the Labour Party Manifesto that the badger cull was unscientific and would be stopped and alternatives to tackling bTB would be used. Worryingly both Starmer and Reed were smiling and hand-shaking farmers prior to the 2024 General Election. However, their word was in print.
Since the Labour Party was voted into power it, Starmer and Reed have flatly refused to even discuss the badger cull with their voters and even some of their MPs are unhappy with the silence.
When would Labours “unbreakable” Manifesto promise to stop the culls come into force?
Secretary of State for the Environment, Steve Reed MP (Shadow Secretary when he and Starmer made the promise), stated,
“we're not going to end any of the existing licences, let me be clear on that. We don't want to send sudden shocks into the system.”
Now, just weeks later, it has been revealed that this Labour government has declared its Manifesto promises that got it voted in were simple lies and many suspect that a deal was made with farmers prior to the election. DEFRA is preparing to approve a new Badger cull in Cumbria by issuing yet another culling licence.
We are seeing foxes heading for extinction (again) and badgers along with them. Are the "animal loving British public" seriously just going to sit there and let two more species go extinct like others also on the verge?
Yes.
I called the UK "The Blood Red Island" because it has seen species -birds, mammals, fish- all go extinct and even those brought to the UK to 'reintroduce' the species are being killed off. The Labour Government has to now be seen as pro hunt government; fishing for votes and more has led our wildlife to extinction road and they don't care because they are only in it for the political power and money.
Where are the protests ?Those that are being organised will need every person who really cares about the environment and wildlife conservation to attend if they can. Write to your MP and do not take “Oh, we’ll look into that” as a brush off. Demand that Labour fulfill its promises rather than betray its voters. Email DEFRA to Protest. Email Natural England and protest against the cull. Be a pain in the ass and email daily.
We are now fighting to save the badger an all other endangered species and if we let Starmer and Reed win then by the 2030s badgers and foxes will be extinct except for some urban populations. What happens when they decide to cull town and City badgers on your doorstep?
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