Badgers Are NOT "Garden Pets" for Social Media Likes!

 

 I am fully aware of Badger feeders just as I am aware of fox feeders.

I have seen photographs and video clips of people opening doors to entice badgers to take food from their hands. You can be as careful as you want but as with a fox being too slow will lose you fingers.

Although badgers and foxes tend to live in a "you don't bother me then I wont bother you" way with each other and domestic cats there can be problems.

Just as foxes are WILD canids so badgers are WILD mustelids and they are NOT "garden pets". With badgers and foxes you must -if you put supplementary food out every few days- leave it away from the house: bringing badgers and foxes to the doorstep is a challenge to house cats which means that you create conflict. Cats will take any opportunity to attack foxes and might not fare so well against a badger (though cats seem to display a sense that foxes they can attack but not badgers).

Social Media "Likes" is not what wildlife are there for. Photograph or video them from a distance but not only might your habituating them to humans lead to problems with neighbours (badgers are protected but I've been involved in a number of cases where neighbours have threatened to "remove" them.

Habituating foxes and badgers to humans makes it far easier to snare or kill them. There are a lot of sick people out there who love doing this for 'fun' and profit selling to taxidermists.

Personally., if it were withing my power I would make it illegal to feed foxes and badgers during summertime when all of their natural prey are out there in abundance and when they kill rats and mice there is less need for poisons to be used. Winter feeding when things are rough, okay, but summer time they do not need feeding up.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE consider how you interact with badgers.