Good news but some sad news

Over the last few weeks we have had some good news stories so thought I would give you an update, but there is always bad news to counter it, I will put that at the end.

We have been contacted by a very wildlife friendly lady that lives in the Headley area near Bordon. She wanted to know what was involved in building an artificial badger sett in the wooded area of her garden.

Nick and I jumped at the chance to advise her and arranged to go and meet up and look at possible sites.

The lady is having a large wildlife pond being built and wanted to complete the badger sett at the same time

We had a great visit and the site is ideal for a sett. We did find evidence of a very old disused sett nearby but it is definitely an abandoned one. There are no busy roads nearby and her property backs onto many thousand of acres of National Trust land.

We have supplied loads of information, and put her in touch with Tris Pearce who has started supplying materials for artificial setts.

Hopefully within the next few weeks the sett will be in place ready for any orphaned cubs from this year.

We will keep you posted on progress

We received an enquiry from a Fleet resident checking on whether the hole he has had put in his new fence and gate is big enough to allow the badgers into his garden. This makes such a nice change from people wanting to keep them out.

I went round and had a chat and confirmed the hole should be big enough.

I have been offered to visit a hide where badgers are regular evening visitors. If the hide is suitable and if I can negotiate further use of it we will try and arrange a few badger watches. I will update after I have been. Hopefully the badgers will show up!

Good but sad news; you may have seen on Facebook that a wildlife rescue place in Kent ended up rescuing 6 orphaned cubs last week. They are investigating whether any crime has been committed that led to so many orphans. The upside is that all the cubs are healthy and are now being looked after till they are old enough to be released back into the wild. It may be that the artificial sett will be home to some of these orphans. We will let you know if that is the case.

Now a not so happy occurence. I was contacted this week regarding a dead badger in Crondall. The lady that reported it said it looked like the badger had been burnt.

Nick and I went over and can confirm the badger had been burnt. Obviously we don't know if this was postmortem or not. We suspect, thankfully, that the badger had died, possibly of natural causes, and had been found and set alight for some sadistic fun. We have reported it to the police. Obviously no action can be taken as there is no proof of what has actually happened but at least we have it formally recorded.

Next month on 14th June we have Craig Fellowes from Badger Trust coming to take us through how to record and report instances of badger crime. This will be held at Velmead Junior School in Fleet. If you haven't already signed up to come and you want to join us please email us at info@northeasthampshirebadgergroup.com I will send out details in the next couple of weeks to those attending.

In July we have the event at The Hawk Conservancy Trust. We have some volunteers to look after the stand so hopefully it will be a successful couple of days.

Well thats all for now. Thanks for taking time to read this Blog and for being a member of the group.

Best regards, Howard