Badger Surveys

The Protection of Badgers Act 1992 makes it an offence to willfully kill, injure, take or attempt to kill, injure or take a badger or interfere with a badger sett by damaging a sett or any part thereof. It also makes it an offence to willfully destroy a sett, obstruct access to a sett or disturb a badger while occupying a sett.

The act defines a badger sett as “any structure or place, which displays signs indicating current use by a badger”.

Within Britain badgers also receive protection under Schedule 6 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act, 1981 (as amended), while European protection is afforded through inclusion in Appendix 3 of the Bern Convention. If a project encompasses any activities which may damage or destroy a sett, obstruct a sett entrance or disturb a badger while it is occupying a sett, then a licence is required from Natural England prior to works commencing.

Badger surveys take place within the area of proposed development and up to a 1km radius from its periphery. Within the survey area all fence lines, woodland and scrub habitats will be searched looking for badger evidence in the form of:

• Latrines
• Setts (Main, Annexe, Subsidiary, Outlier)
• Paths between setts and feeding areas
• Scratching posts at the base of tree trunks
• Snuffle holes
• Day nests
• Hair traces
• Footprints

All evidence will be recorded on a location map and a grid reference taken at each location. This information can then be used to create a detailed map of badgers at the site which will support the report that will be written to fulfil the requirements of the planning authorities.

It may not always be clear from the presence/absence survey how recent the badger evidence is and further survey may be required to assess the extent of the badgers usage of the sett.

This can involve methods such as placing smoothed sand at the entrance of a sett and checking for footprints and placing small sticks or tape across an entrance to a sett and look for disturbance and collect loose hairs. These methods can also confirm that the setts are being used by badgers and not other mammals.

If two of more main setts are located within the survey area it may be necessary to undertake a bait marking survey to identify the extent of each social group’s territory, which are marked at their boundaries by latrines.

Harmless, indigestible plastic markers are placed within some food (usually peanuts or syrup) left by the main badger setts, with different colour markers for each badger sett. These markers will then be consumed and later defecated by the badgers. Badger latrines will be surveyed to note the colour of markers found within each latrine site. The boundaries of each badger social group can then be identified by linking up the latrines used by each group.

Most types of construction work within 20 metres of a badger sett will require a licence. The use of very heavy machinery including soil cultivation which would cause a disturbance and or ground vibration, within 30 metres of a sett is also licensable.

Once planning permission has been approved a license application can be made to Natural England, once the application has been processed it can take up to one month to receive a response.

The application requires a mitigation 'method statement' describing how the badger population will be conserved on site after development. Typical mitigation includes avoiding sensitive times of year and depending on the type of sett affected, set destruction, sett exclusion or artificial sett design and implementation.