North American Badger

The North American badger is identified as a species at risk and therefore is a conservation concern. They inhabit open forest and grassland areas. They have short legs and black and white fur with two triangular black patches or badges on their cheeks. Their claws are specialized to dig out prey or burrows for resting and rearing young. They have large home ranges and build elliptical burrows. All they need for habitat is abundant prey and suitable soil. However, if their prey is abundant in areas with less suitable soil they will still inhabit those locations.

Forestry can be very helpful in creating badger habitat as it removes forest cover and increases badger prey populations in these cutblock areas. Habitat can be improved or created by thinning forests and prescribed burning to reduce forest encroachment. If burrowing sites are found within cutblock areas a Wildlife Tree Patch should be planned around it with the implementation of a machine-free zone. Other important activities to consider are the deactivation of roads after the harvest, closure of areas from April 1 to August 15 if there are maternal activities sighted in the area, and plan cutting patterns.

Regenerating cutblocks can reduce the quality of these areas as badger habitat. Mounding debris and prescribed burning might increase prey populations. It would also be helpful to keep the tree density at 150 stems per hectare to reduce crown closure.

Reducing stock densities to improve badger habitat will also be financially beneficial to the licensee, however, the effects of a growing ground squirrel population on the regenerating forest are unknown.

For range licensees it is important to consider a few strategies including not killing badger prey, not having a big concentration of livestock in an area with badger burrows, keeping heavily grazed sites at a stubble height of 15 cm and in general keeping livestock from grazing on already heavily grazed pastures, maintaining native vegetation cover, leaving bunchgrass to graze until late spring and using rest-rotation grazing.

Monitoring badgers and their burrows is very important and the Badger Recovery Team of British Columbia should be informed if any sightings occur.

Source: Badger Wildlife Habitat Decision Aid