Defra, UK - Farming - Wildlife and plants

Farming: wildlife and plants

Badgers

Badgers are nocturnal mammals which live in woodland or copses often adjacent to fields. They are widespread across the UK but more common in the south west and west of England. Badgers live in setts in groups of up to 15, they have one litter of young a year between January and March.

The association between bovine TB (bTB) in cattle and badgers has been a complex and contentious issue for many years. To see the most recent developments in relation to controlling the reservoir of bTB in the GB badger population see the Bovine TB pages of the Animal Health and Welfare section of the Defra website.

The sections below highlight the key issues concerning:

badger protection
badger control
badgers and bovine TB (bTB)

Badger protection

Badgers were first given protection under the Badgers Act 1973 and badger setts under the Badgers Act 1991. The Protection of Badgers Act 1992 combined the earlier legislation. The 1992 Act makes it an offence to:

kill, injure or take a badger
cruelly ill-treat any badger
interfere with a badger sett

Under the 1992 Act, licences may be issued by Natural England, the National Assembly for Wales Agriculture Department or the Scottish Executive Environment and Rural Affairs Department (SEERAD) for ‘interfering’ with badger setts for agricultural or forestry purposes, watercourse or drainage work and the control of foxes to protect livestock or penned game.

Licences also cover situations where badgers need to be killed to prevent serious damage to property (e.g. historic buildings), land, crops or livestock or the prevention of disease.

Badger control

Under the licensing outlined above, badgers can be controlled using techniques like electric fencing and one-way gates to exclude badgers from setts, but any interference of badgers or setts is illegal unless under licence.

Illegal baiting, gassing or snaring of badgers is an offence under the badger protection acts.

Badgers and bovine TB

Since 1971 when the first badger was found carrying bovine TB (bTB), there has been a lot of debate around the transmission of the disease between the two species.

In 1996 an Independent Review Team began a scientific review on behalf of the Government into the link between bTB and badgers.

The group concluded that “the evidence strongly supports the view that, in Britain, badgers are a significant source of infection in cattle”. The group recognised, however, that scientific data were lacking and recommended that an experiment, the Randomised Badger Culling Trial, be set up to establish the effect of culling badgers on TB in cattle.

In October 2005, the Independent Scientific Group on Cattle TB (ISG), who designed the trial, published some interim analysis. The final report will be published in early 2007.

For further information on the measures being taken to control bovine TB see the bovine TB section of the Defra website.

You can also refer to guidance specifically for farmers, covering pre-movement testing of TB, dealing with a bovine TB breakdown, and protecting your herd from bovine TB.