Cornwall Badger Group

23/12/2025

Happy Christmas everyone. Thank you all for your help and support throughout the year.

21/12/2025

🌙 European Badger — The Underground Engineer of the Wild
Meet the European badger (Meles meles), a powerful, stocky mammal famous for its bold black-and-white face and an extraordinary life beneath the soil. Native to Europe and parts of Western Asia, this nocturnal forager is best known for building vast underground homes called setts, some of which are used for generations.

🧬 What Is a European Badger?
The European badger belongs to the Mustelidae family, alongside otters, martens, and wolverines. Unlike many mustelids, it has a robust body and strong forelimbs built for digging rather than speed. Its iconic facial stripes may help with recognition in low light.

🌟 Master Digger
Badgers are exceptional engineers. Their setts can include dozens of entrances, multiple chambers, and tunnels stretching hundreds of meters. These underground networks provide shelter, warmth, and safety for families — and are often shared by other animals like foxes or rabbits.

🐾 Social & Nocturnal
European badgers live in social groups, usually emerging at dusk to forage. They communicate through scent marking, vocalizations, and body language. Despite their cuddly appearance, they are strong, determined, and capable of defending themselves when threatened.

📍 Habitat & Range
Found across woodlands, farmland, grasslands, and forest edges throughout Europe. They prefer areas with soft soil for digging and nearby food sources.

🍃 Diet

Earthworms (a favorite)

Insects and larvae

Fruits, roots, and grains

Small mammals and eggs (occasionally)

⚠️ Conservation Note
Generally listed as Least Concern, but badgers face threats from habitat loss, road traffic, persecution, and disease. In some regions, their populations are heavily impacted by human activity.

✨ Strong, social, and deeply connected to the land, the European badger is a quiet guardian of the underground — a reminder that some of nature’s most important lives unfold beneath our feet. 🌿🦡

20/12/2025

UPDATE.

If anyone donates or joins by paypal would you please leave your details/email so we can thank you or and put you on our membership list, thank you x

This Christmas/Solstice please consider joining Cornwall Badger Group. We are so thin on the ground-with so much to do.
Membership is just £10 a year and any donations are always helpful. Just head over to our website for more information-
cornwallbadgergroup.org
With all the developments and countryside being dug up-new roads, badger baiting, free shooting and the culling, badgers are really having a tough time.

We need physical help with-
Volunteers in and beyond the St Austell area.
Admin.
Fundraising.
Eyes on the ground.
RTA reporting.
Any type of badger related communications relating to their welfare, such as sett blocking, set disturbance, developments etc.
Thank you to all who have donated items for fundraisers- and to those who have supported us and here's to protecting our Cornish badgers in 2026.

Please share this post🦡🌳🦡🌳🦡🎄

20/12/2025

Early morning call to a sett where contractors are erecting a fence. A tracked vehicle has driven over parts of the sett and posts were about to be driven in at intervals. Advised contractor of the law and together we worked out the best places for the posts to go, by hand - no more driving over the sett! All settled amicably, the best way if possible.

11/12/2025

Our Wildlife Crime Manager and Trainer, Craig Fellowes MBE, was an advisor on a case on BBC's Farm 999.

The case involved badger baiting where the offenders were found and prosecuted!

Watch the full episode on BBC Iplayer: Farm 999 - Season 1 Episode 10.

Amazing work Craig!

09/12/2025

Beneath the moon's soft silver glow,
through glimmers of the falling snow,
Our forests hide this gentle kin,
away from harm and cruelty's din.
O wild sweet creatures, rest, be still, may peace come in your dreams until, You one day wake to finally see, a world where you're both safe and free.

Stand with Badgers 🦡

08/12/2025

01/12/2025

Had one to many !!! 😄😄

30/11/2025

Newborn badgers open their eyes around week five and begin learning simple scent rituals underground.

They wrestle, nurse together, and practice early clan behaviors before surfacing as the newest members of their nighttime community.

30/11/2025

A few weeks ago we got a message from a furious landowner who loves his Badgers asking us to pop over to see the devastation that had occurred on his land. It was pretty unbelievable to be honest.
There is a foot path where his land finished and scum had broken down his fencing made themselves very comfy by using a couple of the landowners chairs that had been discarded, sawn a couple of very large branches of a pine tree, even had a fire going while behind Bracken and Bramble shot all his Badgers 😡 It was very professionally done, they knew exactly what they were doing.
Unfortunately the owner only spotted it all as the bracken started to die off, we’ve been over to see if we can see any activity but unfortunately we couldn’t. But hopefully it will become active again. It was also reported to the police.
The landowner was extremely angry and upset as the sett had been there completely covered in Brambles for many many years, along come the scum and they get wiped out. 😡

23/11/2025