"The UK is currently one of the most nature-depleted countries on Earth, with an average 19% decline in species abundance since 1970. Nearly 1 in 6 (16%) of the over 10,000 studied species are threatened with extinction, placing the country in the bottom 10% globally for biodiversity intactness"
Over at the Fox Project Bristol (Face Book) I just noted how statistical analysis shows what the true number of road kill foxes might be.
How that is done is explained there but I thought that I would check a couple of the estimation sites and see what figure they come up based on the 61 known deaths in BBG area:
"If 61 badgers are reported killed, the true total is estimated to be between 122 and 183 deaths, as reported collisions often only represent one-third to one-half of actual incidents. The higher total accounts for unrecorded deaths, where animals crawl away to die, and the lack of comprehensive reporting."
Sadly, I have to say that the lower estimate is what I would expect BUT that is me just wanting a low overall figure.
It used to be estimated that 100,000 badgers died on UK roads every year. Then it went down to 60,000 and the new"guess without much work" is 50,000. I cannot see that as accurate. We lost over 300,000 badgers through the unscientific cull and no one knows how many killed illegally and that includes by "badgermen" hired by farmers on the quiet.In some areas badgers are extinct and none could be found to fill cull quotas and bTB free badgers were killed to fill quotas -I will hold back any comment.
I suspect that badger road deaths (genuine ones not staged 'road deaths' to sell to taxidermists) number in the low thousands by now. It shows just how out of touch and reliant on dogma and just repeating easily remembered figures national bodies are -and local groups repeat the same old figures.
060 Thursday
28 05 2026 --- Headley Rd, Bishopsworth B13 7RN
sow badger thin, possibly part blind 4.2kg PTS
061 Friday 29
05 2026 Just FYI I just picked up a dead female badger in the middle of the
a369 westbound near gordaño services.
Hopefully, being able to see the daily/weekly badger losses this will give the reader some idea of how many badgers (we are already up to 137 known dead foxes) we lose locally. Then think about that on a national basis (where there are any badgers left).
Historically and to see whether setts identified by the old Avon Badger Group (apparently went defunct in 1993) those records are important.
Another dead badger recorded this time in BANES:
059 Wednesday
There has been no large number of deaths of badgers in the BBG area. Someone was reading something about the cull and somehow confused what was written (NOT by me) to mean a large number of badgers had suddenly been killed here,
Cars are THE top killer still.
Two people asked why I do not raise funds to get "Wildlife Crossing" signs made and placed in wildlife death hot spots?
I tried that about 5 years ago but no one was interested in donating and there is the legal problem. Highways England or Bristol City Council Highways will not put up signs as they cost money. They will not allow people to put up signs because THEY have to do that. Members of the public doing so can be prosecuted.
Really not enough people care about wildlife to donate the money needed and wildlife rescue in the area scrapes by.
So, yes, I have thought about and proposed the idea but,,,,
Badger killed and moved off road Callington Road BS4.
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Cheers all round? Read the part that says "Both the Badger Trust and Cumbria Wildlife Trust said they were concerned a culling licence remained potentially active in
I have already stated several times that until the Government gives an absolute, in writing, guarantee that there will be no more culls there is ALWAYS the threat of a "required special licence cull".
Sadly, if possible, it will take many decades for the population to recover although extinction in some large areas is likely. Over 300,000 badgers kill;ed due to bad science and corruption.
We should all be thankful for the work of anti cull groups who have risked a lot over the years including vicious assaults.
Federica Bedendo
North East and
Published
22 May 2026, 06:07 BST
2 Comments
Badger culling has effectively ended in
The practice was widely used in farming to control the
spread of bovine tuberculosis (TB), which resulted in the slaughter of more
than 270,000 cattle in the last 10 years, according to government figures.
The last badger culling licence, which was granted in
The Badger Trust said the move was "good news for
badgers" as culling was not an effective way to tackle bovine TB.
The trust's chief executive Nigel Palmer said: "You
can't solve a disease in one animal by killing another animal."
The government said it was planning to move towards
vaccinating badgers to control the spread of TB, but development of a vaccine
for cattle was still under way.
"Until they address the problem in cattle, which is
where the problem lies, they're not going to get on top of it," Palmer
said.
Nigel Palmer, chief executive at the Badger Trust. He has
short brown hair and he is speaking to a crowd, which is out of shot, holding a
microphone. He is wearing a t-shirt with the word 'badgers' on it.
Image source,Nigel Palmer
The National Farmers Union (NFU) said badger culling had
been effective in controlling transmissions, together with other measures such
as cattle testing and movement control.
NFU president Tom Bradshaw said a decision to end wildlife
control when effective cattle vaccination and testing were not expected to be
available until 2030 left "gaping holes" in TB control policies.
He said: "There needs to be much greater urgency,
attention and investment given to TB eradication. We still believe a
comprehensive approach is the best way to eradicate this terrible
disease."
Defra said the most recent data showed 5% of tested badger carcasses
were positive for TB in 2024.
It said cattle testing and surveillance had always been
"the foundation" of its strategy and a new plan to control TB was
expected to be announced soon.
"Bovine TB remains one of the most difficult and
persistent animal health challenges, causing devastation for farmers and rural
communities," a Defra spokesperson said.
Cumbria Wildlife Trust said bovine TB took a
"horrendous toll emotionally and financially" on farmers and they
were "very keen" to see the government develop a vaccine for cattle.
"We share a lot of sympathy and empathy with the
farmers who are affected," Cumbria Wildlife Trust's chief executive Steve
Trotter said.
He added wildlife organisations would be open to working
with Defra on a scheme to vaccinate badgers.
Steve Trotter, chief executive of Cumbria Wildlife Trust. He
has short salt and pepper hair and wears glasses. He is wearing a dark fleece
over a blue shirt. His arm is leaning on a drystone wall and there are green
trees behind him.
Both the Badger Trust and Cumbria Wildlife Trust said they
were concerned a culling licence remained potentially active in
"It's very confused messaging," Palmer said.
"We would rather see them end all licences and actually
focus on supporting farmers and supporting them to get on top of this terrible
disease."
The Hunt Saboteurs Association, which opposed badger
culling, said the practice had been a "disaster" for the environment
and it was important to ensure it would never happen again.
Chairman Simon Russell said: "We need to step away from this attitude that as soon as we have a problem with any form of wildlife the answer is to kill it - we need to see that - at best - as the very last resort."
It HAS to be deliberate. Woke up this morning and there it was: The Badger Trust telling me it is setting up a Bristol badger group.
This is just to get more funding and the Trust has NEVER helped local badgers before and had I left it up to them more than a dozen setts would have been built on in the l;ast 6 years.
This is just the big corporate group wanting more groups for more funds.
Although drivers still do not slow down (it is THEIR road) it was good to see that someone fed up of badgers being killed on one stretch of road that Bristol City Council were not interested in doing anything about put up their own sign.
We still have not found out who put the sign up -BCC were quite annoyed at me and I will make it clear now that I had nothing to do with this BUT I commend the person who put it up.
I had a report on Saturday night that a badger cub had been taken in to Highcroft Vets on the Wells Road.
(c)2026 Badger Trust Isle of Wight
Island populations of any animal whether fox or badger is of interest. In my two Red Papers I looked at island foxes as well as island wild cats. Badgers on islands indicate two things:
1. They are an ancient population inhabiting the island since it became water locked.
2. They were transported to the island simply to introduce them there or for hunting/hunting reasons -badgers were being caught and transported all over England in the second half of the 19th century.
If (1) then they need DNA testing and to be studied and given full protection by the law and not subjected to any cull.
If it is (2) then records need to be search for when the introduction started. Foxes were transported to the Isle of Man, Isle of Wight, etc for hunting purposes.; Because of the introduction of mange due to the poor conditions imported foxes faced before being sold on it became a problem noted in thw 18th and 19th centuries.
Hunt masters would kill any population where mange was seen even if the foxes appeared healthy the fact that one had mange meant the entire population had to be killed -cubs and all. Some bright spark decided that foxes had mange due to them being dirty animals and not cleaning out their dens. Badgers didn't have mange and were seen as clean and they cleared out their setts daily. No one accused hunt masters of having high IQs but they worked out that if they got badgers and put them into fox dens their constant cleaning out would mean future foxes did not face mange.
Your brain can hurt if you try to work this all out logically. If the foxes were alive then badgers could not be moved in. If the foxes were gone and the badgers moved in to clean up an area before more imported foxes arrived...where did the badgers go? Where they killed or moved on to another hunting territory?
It is very odd to write that after centuries of melecide the badgers of England only survived because they seemed useful to fox hunts. Otherwise like the original British fox and wild cat badgers would now be extinct -for 'sport' they were not much use ("unless there is a shortage of foxes") so would not have been trapped in Europe and imported in their thousands as foxes, deer, hare, red squirrels and other species were.
Which means that if (2) then we know why -unless some local squire wanted to have a "typically English animal" on his property.
The history of island canids and felids is interesting but island badgers are never mentioned.
Interestingly, every search will tell you that foxes and badgers are absent on the Isle of Man and yet we know from records (written not online because internetters do not study archives) that there are foxes there -again, imported for 'sport' in the 19th century. And:
"No Extant Population: Reports of badger sightings are rare and usually considered to be escapees, not a established population." Escaped from where? The fact that there is no bovine TB on the Isle is stated to be proof that badgers do not exist there and yet that claim of badger introduced bTB can be shot down over and over again.
Removing a badger from an island population, say an orphaned cub, would or should be difficult since there would be questions re. any disease introduction OR if returned back to the island the risk of bTB.
There are a lot of questions about island populations but dogma (spread by armchair 'experts' and internet bloggers) has taken the place of field work. Why get wet and cold when you can just copy and paste 'facts'?
Badgers actually went extinct on the Isle of Wight by 1909. The current population stems from about a dozen badgers introduced in the 1920s by the local hunt.
Sarah Mills received a call from Somerset Badger Watch over an injured badger near Bath (always considered Bristol territory so she let me know).
It is almost unbelievable that so many animals and particularly badgers, are killed by cares but no one reports hitting them. They used to at one point but now whether fox, otter, deer or badger the mantra seems to be "Wildlife shouldn't be on the road!" and then drive on .
Here are today's losses (that we know of):
053 Thursday 14 05 2026 Dead badger
054
Thursday 14 05 2026 Dead badger
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.
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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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
Badger 047 was reported on Monday 04 05 2026 Large dead Badger on the A370 , Brockley, just before Brockley Fruit Stall BS48
Founder of the once great British Naturalist Association (f 1905) W. Kay Robinson wrote in his 1949 book Briatain's Beasts of Prey that people walking around wooded areas during the day would report coming across a bear. Or that a bear moved toward them and they all ran to report to the police or who ever.
Escaped exotics? No. These people were seeing badgers. How on Earth anyone who has grown up and been educated in the UK does not know what a badger is ...it is almost unbelievable.
Mrs James used to see badgers playing around in her garden in the early morning light and occasionally at mid-day. There are, or were before the unscientific cull of badgers, lots of people who saw badgers out and about during the day. Look for badger footage on Face Book or You Tube and there are lots of clips of badgers out and about during the day -p-laying or just exploring.
I have read many books on quadrupeds going back to the 17th century. There is no "exclusively seen only during the night. Mel;ecide depended on knowing where the setts were and not just active at night.
I have been contacted by people concerned that they have seen a badger during daylight. "If it is out in daylight it is sick or injured" is a modern dogma. People copy what others have written and those others likely swiped their info from someone else. Does a badger look fit and healthy and is it moving about normally? Then keep an eye on it and see what it does. Most are usually going back to their setts and you would be surprised at how many people have no idea that badgers walk through their garden every day or that there is a badger sett in the garden two doors down.
Cubs often move around near the setts playing or exploring. Does the cub look injured or weak? No? Then leave it.
WHY stress out a sow and the cubs by trapping young when there is no need to?
We have had two badger cubs trapped by Secret World who are now j hoping to get them back to their mother BUT they have no idea where the sett is. So they have now created a problem that did not exist before just as Bristol Badger Group was hoping to check setts in the area involved. Moronic actions by so called wildlife "rescues" is one of the bigger threats to wildlife after the "We have them and are not going to release them 'sancturies'.
If they look healthy and have no apparent injuries leave them be and PLEASE do not perpetuate the myth of "Out in the light they are at risk".
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 ...
