Badger: The Brock and Its Ancient Setts

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

Badger population estimates for Scotland are based on surveys and vary. Claims that particular setts are many centuries old are plausible but hard to prove.

The brock

established Badgers are powerful animals, about 75 centimetres long, with grey bodies, black legs and a white face with two black stripes. They have strong claws for digging and an excellent sense of smell. In Scots and northern English, the badger is called the brock, a word from Celtic languages.

Setts

established Badgers live in social groups of several adults and their cubs in setts, networks of tunnels and chambers dug into hillsides or woods. Setts can have many entrances and be used and extended by generations of badgers. Badgers are clean animals, regularly changing their bedding of grass and bracken and using latrine pits.

Diet

established Earthworms make up much of the badger's diet, especially on damp nights in pasture. Badgers also eat beetles, wasp grubs, fruit, bulbs, cereals and small mammals.

What the 1991 Handbook recorded

established Who wrote it. The badger account in G. B. Corbet and S. Harris (eds), The Handbook of British Mammals (3rd edn, 1991) was written by Ernest Neal, the leading British badger naturalist of his day, and Chris Cheeseman of the Ministry of Agriculture's badger research team.

established Names. Besides brock, the Handbook gives old English country names including grey, pate, bawson and baget, and the Gaelic brochlach. The British race once named Meles meles britannicus is, it says, not justified as a separate subspecies.

established Where badgers live. Badgers were very widespread in Britain and Ireland, absent only from high ground (usually above 500 metres), some large towns, some intensively farmed or flood-prone lowlands, and most offshore islands. In Scotland the exceptions were Arran and possibly Mull. Attempts to introduce badgers to Jura and Ailsa Craig had failed. A Mammal Society survey of setts from 1963 onwards found just over half in broadleaved or mixed woods and copses, with others in hedgerows, scrub, conifer woods and open ground.

established Family groups and territories. A social group averages six badgers, with a range of two to 23. Territories run from about 30 hectares in the best habitat to more than 150 hectares in poor ground, and about 70% of latrines lie on or near the territory boundary. Setts typically have three to ten entrances, but up to 80 have been recorded. One excavated sett in the Cotswolds had 310 metres of tunnel and had shifted about 25 tonnes of soil. Badgers do not hibernate, but they come out much less in winter, especially in the north, and may stay underground for days in hard frost.

established Breeding. Badgers mate mostly between February and May, but the embryo does not implant until about December. One to five cubs are born underground between mid-January and mid-March, peaking in the first three weeks of February and slightly later in the north. Cubs first come above ground at about eight weeks.

established Survival. Between half and two-thirds of cubs die in their first year, and few badgers live beyond six years in the wild. In 1991 road traffic was the major cause of death in many parts of Britain; adults had no natural enemies apart from people.

established Not a pest. Neal and Cheeseman state that badgers should not be regarded as pests and rarely do economically important damage. They eat many voles, mice and wasps' nests, and game-bird egg losses are insignificant. The account notes that tuberculosis had been found in badgers, which were suspected of passing it to cattle, mainly in south-west England.

Persecution and protection

established Badgers were long persecuted, by baiting with dogs, digging and snaring. The Badgers Act 1973 gave them legal protection, and the Protection of Badgers Act 1992 made it an offence to kill, injure or take a badger, or to damage or interfere with a sett. The 1992 Act brought together the earlier protection, which the 1991 Handbook describes as the Badgers Act 1973 amended in 1981 and 1985. Even then, Neal and Cheeseman reported that badger digging, baiting, lamping and gassing were still going on, and that badger protection groups had formed to guard setts. Wildlife crime officers in Scotland still investigate illegal badger persecution.

Badgers and TB

established In England and Wales, badgers have been culled in efforts to control bovine tuberculosis in cattle, a policy that is controversial. Scotland has been officially free of bovine TB since 2009, and no badger cull has taken place.

• The Scots name for a badger is "brock".
• Badgers eat mainly earthworms.
• Setts can be used for many generations.
• Badgers regularly change their bedding.
• Scotland has never culled badgers for TB control.
• Attempts to introduce badgers to Jura and Ailsa Craig failed.
• A badger can carry in 20 to 30 bundles of bedding in a single night, shuffling backwards with each bundle held under its chin.
• Badger cubs are born in midwinter, usually in February, after a delay of several months before the embryo implants.
• Old country names for the badger include grey, pate, bawson and baget.

• Do not state the age of individual setts as fact.
• Do not say the Protection of Badgers Act 1992 first protected badgers; it consolidated protection dating from the Badgers Act 1973.
• Do not call badgers common pests of farms or forestry; the 1991 Handbook judged their damage rarely of economic importance.