Number of Badger Setts

 

There are now 62 confirmed badger clan areas in the City and County of Bristol. There are no doubt others but people tend to keep quiet about them. That is good until we get a situation where a sett is under threat and we have to try to protect it with no warning.

Total number of clan setts the BBG has now stopped from being developed on is over 15. Long Ashton Parish Council and Bristol City Council still refuse to respond to the presence of badgers and otters on one of its developments. This is the criminality of local authorities who cherish developers money over conservation and the environment.

Someone asked how BBG can say an area has a badger sett if it only has a report of a badger being seen? Well, unless badgers are teleporting (not had that confirmed yet🫣) a badger has to be living somewhere which by definition would be a sett. We do not draw attention to areas where badgers are seen for very obvious reasons and also if you go entering peoples gardens to check if there is a sett in it you'll either end up withy a copper feeling your collar or punch in the bracket.

The list of "where" badgers are is confidential and neither Avon Wildlife Trust nor BRERC has a copy of the list since they have been downright uncooperative over the last 30 years for reasons I cannot fathom. One other person, who I trust (very, very few of them) will get a copy of the list "in case" mortality catches up with me as there doers need to be a record for conservation and protection purposes.

I ought to point out that there are rumoured to be others but I cannot list those without confirmation and householders want to keep it a secret nothing we can do other than ask that they PLEASE let us know if they have a sett "just in case".;

Bristol City Council and Long Ashton Parish Council and South Gloucestershire Council: "We see no badgers"

 

Added another two sett locations to the ones known which takes know urban and countryside territories to over 60.

Which sounds good until you realise how many are being killed.

It should also be noted that two current sites where established setts and badger activity has been noted are still under threat: one by Bristol City Council and the other by South Gloucestershire Council. Despite the evidence both authorities claim there are no badgers present and neither will respond to correspondence on the matter.

Money and development is far more important to these people than saving/conserving a protected species. Lonmg Ashton Parish Council have repeatedly been informed of badgers and otters as well as other species in an area they cover: six emails, messages via Twitter etc -no responses.

 

They Were Scared About What Might Be Found. That is A Cover Up.

 

I had a "little whisper" from a reliable person that the reason I was lied to about badgers not undergoing post mortems due to the possibility of bovine TB was that if we submitted all the badgers recorded and each one was shown not to have bTB (it was considered "highly unlikely" that they would) it would undermine th reasons for the badger cull.

I further decided to check with the Health and Safety Executive and their rule of "no badger post mortems in the PM lab".  No such rule. Just the "natural and proper pre PM checks".

Guess what? While I was being given the "HSE will NOT allow it" crap the PM lab was undertaking badger post mortems.

The question is, and I think we have the answer now, WHAT were they trying to cover up?

The UK is an awful place for wildlife and trying to gain knowledge about wildlife health issues and treatments.

As an addenda this is what you will find online:

Badger post-mortems (necropsies) are strictly regulated to manage the severe risk of zoonotic diseases—primarily Bovine Tuberculosis (Mycobacterium bovis). They must not be performed on standard clinical premises or by the general public; examinations are exclusively handled by specialised facilities like the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) or specific research projects

The APHA were the ones allegedly refusing permission to carry out badger PMs while authorising badger PMs -ON standard clinical premises.  The bTB excuse is a good cover.

Few People Care About Traditional Wildlife Pathways

 

Sadly, it is not rare to hear of badger runs or entrances into gardens being blocked off. If a sett was involved then we could do something but in this case if it is a private/local authority owned home the tenants can block holes in fences.  Thgis is from the BS10 area:

 "I suspect their route has been blocked but I don't know which direction they're coming from their sett. (A few years ago, when  I contacted the Badger Trust about a neighbour damaging a sett in garden, they said they knew where the main set probably was.) 

"I've had adult & young badgers coming in for years. I always leave water for them & sometimes dog biscuit left over from foxes. There was an attempt by a badger to smash through the fence on the other side of my garden at the time the badgers stopped visiting.

" Unfortunately there's only one entrance for them, which is through a tunnel under the opposite fence, which they no longer seem able to access ."

This is the UK and very few people really care about wildlife let alone about an endangered species or its right to survive on traditional clan territory that humans have built on.,

This Is NOT A Hobby

 

When a location is given for a badger death it is left a bit vague for obvious reasons, The exact location is never given.

So "There is a dead badger I've just passed" and then a refusal to give location means that report cannot be included. It's void.

When you post video clips onto social media of 'your' badgers and a polite enquiry is made then totally ignoring the enquiry is not very badger friendly,

Badgers like foxes are NOT your garden pet to help you get social media likes.

Behave and report responsibly because we are trying to save badgers,

Correction To Previous Post and Analysis

 

Correction. There is a report that was missed as it went to Bristol Foxes and Badgers.

Sadly, we hit the key number taking us past any previous year's losses up to 14 06 2026:

067 Thursday 11 06 2026 dead badger on main road to Portbury roundabout, the road coming from Leigh woods.

068 Thursday 11 06 2026 dead badger on Sylvian Way just off the Portway

069 Thursday 11 06 2026 RTA badger cub A369 Martcombe Road in Easton-in-Gordano.

070 Saturday 13 06 2026 Dead badger on side of road A370 at Cleeve , just prior to Budgens towards Congresbury.

Here is what you get when asking AI about this number of losses:

If 70 badgers have been confirmed dead on the road the likely actual number of deaths is between 105 and 140.

The true death toll is typically significantly higher than reported figures due to several factors:

Underreporting & Carcasses Thrown: Many badgers are hit but manage to crawl off the road into nearby vegetation to die, meaning they are never seen or counted on the tarmac.
Scavenging & Decay: Dead badgers left on the roadside are often scavenged by other animals or rapidly decompose, causing them to disappear before they can be recorded. [1]