Badger Road Deaths Suspicious?

 Someone asked whether it was suspicious that so many badgers die in one spot?  Not really because roads were built across wildlife trails used for hundreds if not thousands of years. Wildlife was given no consideration because...well, it meant nothing but the money from contracts to build roads meant a lot.  

Far more foxes die (or rather are reported as being dead) on specific stretches of road that again were built on traditional game routes. In the BBG area we know these stretches. We have alerted the former Labour and now Green (not) City Council. Their response is that while wildlife over and underpasses might well save foxes, otters, badgers and numerous deer from death... "Well, it's the money".   

Someone recently placed a home made sign for drivers at one spot to alert them to badgers crossing. Initially I asked the council whether it had placed the  sign there?  The response was a threat about legal action against me for the sign!!  No idea if it is still there but I did tell the council that if it took legal action against me then I would counter sue and spend the money on more signs at wildlife danger spots. Nothing back.

We live in a country where ego, wealth and disregard for any wildlife is higher than anywhere else in Western Europe. I hope badgers survive but I still believe that in the 2030s we will hit a crisis point where they are extinct or so rare they are listed as Highly Endangered.

Does This Ever Get Depressing?

 

I wrote too soon earlier:

051            Monday 11 05 2026   Dead juvenile badger. off the A37 at Chelwood bridge, nearStantonWick BS39 4NH

 

052            Monday 11 05 2026 before the turnoff for Chew Magna. BS40 8SH

Number 50 Just Recorded

 Depressingly we have just hit 50 KNOWN badger deaths for 2026:

049            Monday 11 05 2026 looks to be a cub, again headed north just past Deanery road roundabout.

 

050            Monday 11 05 2026 remains of an adult near to the turning for Emerson's Green retail centre

No one stopped to check or reported hitting either badger. Nothing new there.

The BADGER is the important species here and not the human.

 BBG covers the area that used to be Bristol before all the politically pointless boundary changes. Part of Bath and NE Somerset, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire and of course the City and County of Bristol.   

Whereas BBG RESPECTS the boundaries and does not operate in the areas covered by other groups we do know one particular badger group comes into Bristol and helps trap, remove and treat (or badgers do not return) badgers we are monitoring. 

We are told nothing and tend to get negative feedback against us because people assume we are cooperating or carrying out the tasks. Whereas in the past we forwarded reports of dead badgers in that group's area we no longer do so as they refuse to forward information they have on badgers reported dead in BBG area.

There are too many people setting up badger/wildlife groups who do so as a hobby or for egotistical reasons. I hear from people around England who have failed to get responses from badger groups or the local group cannot answer a simple question on badgers or badger health.

The BADGER is the important species here and not the human.

Perfect Badger Territory -Sadly, Car Drivers Are The Problem

 

After recorded deaths on a road I wondered how there could still be badgers in the area  sustaining a population. I asked my network. My original theory that there must be two badger clans along a stretch of the A370 seems correct.

Based on information I now have there are definitely two different clan setts in the area. Which does not make the regular loss of badgers on what would have been an ancient wildlife track any less sad.

The Work and What It Means Is Apparently Pointless In The UK

 

Apart from a while living in Germany I was born and raised in Bristol. From an early age I had an interest in wildlife from the smallest insect to the largest mammal. I think it amused my gran when I used to pick up worms from her garden in St Werburgh's and just hold and examine them.

St Werburgh's was great as we lived in Sevier Street with the brook and Mina Road Park to our rear. The odd owl landing on the window sill at night was "fun" (huge glowing eyes outside the window); I interacted with a pretty smart jackdaw and even observed a large caterpillar that after all of these years (I was about 10 years old at the time) I have never been able to identify what species it was.

In 1975 whilst walking to work down Pennywell Road I saw by first fox out in the daylight (it was around 0630) -not far behind it was a pursuer: a chunky black and white tom cat that looked determined to teach "that damned dog" a lesson for coming into its area. A year later I set up the British Fox Study here in Bristol. I also looked into wild cats and badgers. In 1977 I was rather accidentally drawn into exotic animals and spent 1977-2018 acting as a UK police forces wildlife consultant (and later as part of the Partnership Against Wildlife Crime -PAWS).

Yes, I did get interviewed in newspapers 9national and regional) and even on local, national and non UK (Australia and Forces Radio Europe) on my work.

So I started out all those decades ago and tried as best I could to avoid publiciity while I also helped people build wildlife pounds, remove the odd adder that had wandered into their garden and tried to persuade local authorities (Conservative, Labour and currently the very non Greens) to help do more for the environment and help conserve our rapidly dwindling wildlife.

I had the first ever post mortem study into fox deaths set up in Bristol which yielded some interesting results. Outside the UK I am known for my research on canids and felids -particularly extinct ones and I managed to identify which fox inhabited Hong Kong before hunting drove it extinct -something naturalists there had been unable to do.

In 2000 I wrote a paper that clearly stated there WAS a genuine Corsican wild cat (aka "fox-cat") -science caught up with me about five years ago!

I have researched and discovered what the original British fox looked like as well as the wild cat -al archived and published for posterity.

British academia's response? "You aren't with a university are you?" which is their way of saying "you ain't part of the club". Far more interest outside the UK.

The question I keep getting asked by people who wonder WHY I still do all of this with no financial reward or official recognition (I liked it when someone pointed out that a lady who was a public toilet attendant for 30 years got an MBE for her work but "You just get tones of ------ thrown at you!" -it stops any ego developing)

From the 1970s when things were bleak -the Energy Crisis and power cuts- to the 1980s when people seemed to be trying to at least do something to save the environment and wildlife we have seen, since the late 1990s, a downward spiral of not many caring about all of the UK species going extinct, all the trees being cut down and Green Spaces grabbed for selling off.

Local authorities and national governments all have the same mantra: "**** wildlife and the environment -there is money to be made!"

When I am gone very few are going to even know about the work I have done. The UK as a whole doers not care what is going on outside of TV or on the internet. Otters, badgers, foxes and deer are all piling up on the roadside (former wildlife track) but build under or over passes for wildlife to cross? No. That would cost money -it's just wildlife after all.

Today's latest casualty

 It is just bloody relentless.

Only by keeping something like the Fox and Badgers Death Register do you realise just what the KNOWN losses are. Only one report of a dead muntjac deer on one road yet a large number of persons MUST have seen it -but why report a dead animal?

Here is today's badger:

048           Wednesday 06 05 2026 “there is another deceased badger further along the A370 by the Star PH, before Congresbury (N Somerset BS49)