Badgers

 

Certain species of wild mammals are protected under their own legal provisions.

 

In Great Britain, legislation prohibits the taking, injuring, selling, possessing or killing of badgers and it is an offence to ill-treat any badger, damage, destroy, disturb or cause a dog to enter a badger sett. A person shall not be guilty of an offence if the badger is killed, taken or the badger sett interfered with, if they have a licence authorised by the appropriate authority. Licences can be granted for the purposes of education, conservation, zoos, ringing, forestry, agriculture, land drainage, archaeology, controlling foxes or preventing spread of disease and serious damage to land, crops, poultry or property. There is no individual legislation which protects badgers or their setts in Northern Ireland.

 

Specific legislation for protecting badgers is provided by the Badgers Act, 1992 (amended, for Scotland, by the Nature Conservation (Scotland) Act 2004).