The Importance of Hedgerows for British Badgers (Meles meles)A few weeks ago and after many improvements and redrafts, I submitted my postgraduate thesis on badger ecology. What began as an ambitious plan to visit and survey 100 badger setts in the Midlands ended as a fully home-based project using satellite imagery in a bid to avoid unnecessary travel - the surveying period of the project coincided with the strictest lockdown measures for England, so my plans had had to change. Despite these challenges I still undertook research that I'm very proud of and I wanted to share the results here.
European badgers are nocturnal omnivores, typically living in a communal sett with anywhere between one and 24 other badgers. Living communally means that foraging is easier, and raising young is less demanding as other members of the sett will help out. The number of badgers cohabiting in a sett really depends on the resources available in that habitat. Where there is more space and food, it's likely there will be more badgers. Research has shed light on some of the habitat features which are preferred by badgers when situating a new sett - these are the things which, if badgers had opposable thumbs and access to computers, a boar or sow badger might search for on Rightmove. Are they looking for a south-facing garden and double glazing? Not quite. One key feature is broad-leaved woodland full of species like oak, beech, or elm which provide shelter and support a lot of invertebrates and small mammals that badgers can feed on. Research in Ireland has demonstrated that hedgerows are another key habitat feature for badgers. This might seem surprising since hedgerows are human-made, but so much woodland has been lost in Britain due to deforestation that hedgerows are now one of our most abundant living features. Their dense vegetation provides corridors between patches of valuable woodland and they act as places for badgers to forage, take shelter, and build their setts. Many hedgerows also contain species such as bramble and hawthorn which are especially important for badgers. Although this preference for hedgerows has been shown in Irish badgers, few studies have looked at British badger populations. During this project I wanted to find out if badgers in central England were more likely to build their setts in habitats with more hedgerows. The study took place in Leicestershire and Rutland, two landlocked counties which are highly agricultural. There are around 1,460 cattle farms in Leicestershire alone, each one with a different amount of hedgerow tracing its field edges. This made the counties an ideal place to conduct the research because I would be able to analyse areas with high and low densities of hedgerow. It's at this point that I need to say a big thank you to the Leicestershire and Rutland Badger Group who kindly provided the sett location data for this project, and without these records it would have been impossible to do my research. So how did I go about it without surveying the setts in person? This took a little bit of lateral thinking, and a few failed attempts. In the end I took the locations of 15 badger setts and 15 random locations with no badger setts, and mapped them onto satellite images of Leicestershire and Rutland. Then I used a digital measuring tool to trace all the hedgerows within a kilometre of each sett and manually recorded the density. Now I won't lie - it was quite tedious and it took a really long time. But eventually I had my data points and set about analysing them. My main finding from the research was that areas with more hedgerows did have a greater probability of having a badger sett. In fact, they were 1.35 times more likely. This suggested that badgers in the counties did have a preference for areas with more hedgerows when choosing where to build a sett. I also found that areas with more hedgerow generally had more setts too, which is logical because more hedgerow means more resources and that means more badgers. My results might be useful for cattle farmers in the study area, because they can be used to predict where badgers are more likely to build their setts. Reducing the contact between badgers and cattle has become an important measure to limit the spread of bovine Tuberculosis (bTB), an outbreak of which can cost a farmer £10,000 or more to control. In the name of reducing bTB, badgers have been systematically culled in Britain since 2013 despite expert advice that these culls have failed to meet government standards for effectiveness. Evidence suggests that habitats with more hedgerow reduce contact between badgers and cattle because badgers can find key resources such as food in a smaller area. This in turn reduces their need to travel long distances and so they are less likely to encounter cattle on agricultural land and transmit or receive bTB. The implications of this research are huge. If landowners had more high quality hedgerows on their land, then their cattle might never interact with badgers at all and that would significantly reduce badger-cattle transmission of the disease. After all, many industry insiders blame badgers for the vast majority of bTB outbreaks, despite evidence that poor biosecurity when moving cattle around the country is more crucial. Culling is without a doubt the greatest threat facing British badgers today, alongside habitat loss which affects all of our wildlife. I believe that my research and further studies into badger habitat preference might help to develop more holistic management techniques, reduce the need for culling, and benefit biodiversity on British farms. What would a badger look for on Rightmove? A wildlife friendly farmer.
3 Comments
Matthew
10/24/2020 02:09:18 pm
Brilliant! Love your intro and Rightmove analogy!!
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10/24/2020 02:32:00 pm
Very nice and accessible summary of your project. Congrats on submitting the thesis!
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Daisy Robinson
10/25/2020 04:35:41 am
Thank you Michael :)
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AuthorHi, I'm Daisy. I graduated from my MSc in Ecology last year and I love nature ArchivesCategories |