Badgers: considerations to avoid disturbing a sett

Police forces in throughout UK have numerous national operations aimed at raising awareness and tackling specific crimes. For example, there is Operation Galileo which targets illegal hare coursing, Operation Leviathan which concentrated on fish poaching and Operation Owl which deals with bird of prey offences.

To add to these rural awareness groups, on 6 October, Operation Badger was re-launched by the Badger Crime Priority Delivery Group (BCPDG). The operation aims to raise awareness of the nature of criminal activity against badgers and to encourage the reporting of unlawful behaviour.

As CLA members will already know, badgers are a protected species under the Protection of Badgers Act 1992. The law makes it an offence to wilfully kill, injure, take a badger or attempt to do so, except as permitted by the act; to possess a dead badger or any part of it unless it can be shown that the badger was not killed in contravention of the law; to cruelly treat a badger, use badger tongs, to dig for a badger or to use certain firearms to kill or take a badger.

In addition, it is an offence under Section 3 of the 1992 legislation to interfere with badger setts including damaging, destroying or blocking access to them.

There are a number of activities undertaken by CLA members that could disturb badgers, so it is important to be vigilant and mindful of any setts. These activities can include ploughing and harvesting crops, tree felling and timber extraction or the construction and repair of flood defences or watercourses.

Natural England advises that a license is unlikely to be required for:

• The use of hand tools or machinery close to a sett
• Clearing ditches and water courses near a sett
• Clearing vegetation near setts (so long as trees are not uprooted and access to the sett it not blocked)

Such activities are deemed unlikely to disturb badgers. However, if damage to the sett or disturbance cannot be avoided, then land managers should apply for a license from Natural England before undertaking any work.

For further guidance on the legal status of badgers, CLA members can order handbook 75 via their MyCLA account, entitled, Badgers and the Law. This handbook outlines how to solve issues caused by badgers without a license and what licenses may be required to permit otherwise unlawful activities under the Protection of Badgers Act 1992.