A volunteer recently phoned me about a dead badger she had seen on the side of the road. She thought someone should know about it but didn’t necessarily know who to inform. If you see a dead badger, it’s always useful to report it. In most incidences the badger will have died from having been run over by a passing vehicle. However, badgers that have been illegally killed from badger baiting practices are often dumped on the roadside as a way of ‘disposing of the evidence’. Most passersby would assume that it had died from being hit and not by other means.

In Scotland there is a group called Scottish Badgers, (www.scottishbadgers.org.uk) their website has a contact number to phone or you can fill in an online form. It is important to report a casualty to Scottish Badgers as soon as you can. Useful information to give them would be the road number and location. If you are on an open road and are not able to easily describe where you are; it’s often handy to make a note of the distance you have travelled on your milometer to the next junction, farm, etc.

At the Falls of Clyde and we are lucky to have lots badgers living nearby. Local Lanarkians often tell me of sightings from their garden and we have a number of setts on the reserve itself. With everything that’s been going on in the news recently about the badger cull in England and Wales; it makes you realise how easily humans can have a dramatic effect on our wildlife. From running over a badger on your way home from work to having a mass cull of a local population.

Laura Whitfield – Falls of Clyde Ranger