Time for an update

It has been a little while since I did an update on what has been going on, so as I have a bit of time spare he goes.

We were asked by Hampshire and IoW Police Rural Crimes team if we could help them out recently. A badger had been found in The New Forest that was badly injured and taken to a local vets. On examination the vet suspected that it may have been attacked by dogs, so they informed the police.

The Rural Crimes Team passed this on to Badger Trust and it came to us with a request as to whether we could survey the surrounding area for any setts and check if they had been interfered with.

We managed to get 4 groups available to survey within a mile of where the badger was found. At the end of the weekend we had identified several well used setts and a disused sett. Thankfully none of them showed signs of interference.

We concluded that the injuries may have been inflicted by another badger over territory. We will never know but we did what we could. That's what we are here for.

We have had the usual queries from members of the public regarding badger activity in gardens. These often are just badgers foraging but we do get the more serious ones where badger digging is threatening a building.

In Fleet I was asked to look at where a badger had dug under the fence at the side of a property and had continued under the path and heading for the foundations of the house.

As can be seen the paving has completely collapsed. On inspection it looked like the badger came across the footings and stopped digging.

Further along the path are more signs of the paving sinking. I set up a trailcam the other side of the fence where the entrance is to see how much activity there was.

For several nights a badger or 2 were seen dragging loads of bedding into the entrance, so it is well used.

A plan needs formulating for repairing the paths with as little disturbance to the badgers as possible. I have advised the home owner to either not use the path or put down sheets of ply so they dont fall into any tunnels that may be under the paving.

The other day we received a message about a female badger that had been killed on a road in Fleet overnight. The person that found it indentified it as a female but was unsure if it was lactating. I arranged to meet the lady so she could show me where the badger was. When we got to where she had carefully placed the corpse it had gone, no signs of it at all, so that is a mystery yet to be solved. Looking at the pictures that had been taken it didn't look like she was lactating.

I decided to do a search of the woods at the side of the road just in case. I found a small active sett, maybe 6 entrances. I checked each entrance for any signs of cubs but all was quiet.

The lady that got in touch offered to check the sett a couple of times a day for a few days just in case any cubs came out looking for mum. So far all good.

On Wednesday got another message frm a lady in Liphook that a small badger was curled up behind her shed. It had been there for over 24 hours.

I phoned and checked it was still there, got confirmation so rushed over to Liphook with a cage ready for a rescue. Whilst on the way I tried to contact various Wildlife Hospitals to arrange to drop it off once rescued. Eventually managed to get through To Hart Wildlife Rescue who said they could take it.

When I arrived I expected to see a young cub but it wasn't, it was an adult female. Took a while to work out how I was going to get between the shed and fence, gap was probably only 8" wide. I opted for positioning the cage at the closest end and using a long handled sweeping brush managed to usher the badger into the cage.

Having got her safely settled in the cage I took her to Hart. They checked her over and they found a bad wound on her rump, probably inflicted in a fight with another badger - she lost!

They were going to treat the wound, make sure she was well fed and watered and in a few days look to release her in the vicinity of where she was found.

So that's just a quick update on some of the things we get up to. If you have spare time and want to get more involved then please get in touch.