Badgers are among the most familiar animals in the Northern Ireland countryside and among the most frequently overlooked at the design stage of a scheme — usually because the sett is in a hedgerow nobody walked.
Badgers are social, territorial and highly sedentary. A well-established sett may have been in the same bank for decades, passed down through generations of the same social group, with a network of paths, latrines and outlying setts radiating from it across the surrounding fields.
Ecologically they do a good deal of quiet work. They are omnivores with a diet dominated by earthworms, supplemented with insect larvae, small mammals, fruit and cereals, and their digging turns and aerates soil, creates bare ground that plants and invertebrates colonise, and disperses seed. Old setts, once abandoned, are frequently taken over by foxes, rabbits and, in places, nesting birds.
The main pressures are habitat fragmentation and the loss of the hedgerows, banks and field margins that setts and foraging routes depend on, alongside road mortality — which in some parts of Northern Ireland is a significant cause of death.
Badgers and their setts are protected under the Wildlife (Northern Ireland) Order 1985 as amended. It is an offence to kill, injure or take a badger, and to damage, destroy or obstruct access to a sett, or to disturb a badger while it is occupying one. Protection applies to the sett itself, whether or not it is in use at the time.
Badgers come into an application where works, access tracks or spoil storage would affect a sett or the land immediately around it, or where hedgerows, banks and field boundaries used for foraging and commuting would be removed. A sett does not have to be on the red-line site to be a constraint — works close by can still cause disturbance.
Survey work is a walkover looking for setts, paths, latrines, hair and snuffle holes, and can be carried out year-round, though it is easier when vegetation has died back. Where a sett will be affected, a licence from NIEA is normally required and there are seasonal restrictions on when work can proceed.
Often yes, but it depends on the distance, the type of works and the vibration or disturbance involved. The position needs establishing by survey before a layout is fixed, because moving a building is far easier at design stage than after approval.
It does not usually stop the scheme. It generally means the layout is adjusted to keep works an appropriate distance away, or, where that is not possible, a licensed sett closure outside the closed season — which needs to be planned well ahead.
All year round. Late autumn through to early spring is often easiest, when vegetation is low and field signs are more visible.
A PEA is the standard first look at a development site: what habitats are present, what protected species could be there, and what further survey work — if any — the application will need.
Read about preliminary ecological appraisals →
Other species: Bats · Otters · Nesting birds · Red squirrels · Pine martens · Irish hare · Barn owls
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