Today (October 6th) is National Badger Day!
Badgers are the UK’s largest land predator, feeding on small mammals, birds’ eggs, worms, fruits and plants. They are easily identified by their black and white striped face, large, grey body and short, fluffy tail.
Badgers use their strong front paws to create their burrows in the ground which are called ‘setts’. You may be able to spot active setts in the wild as they will have clean doorways marked with piles of used bedding comprised of dry grass and leaves.
If you aren’t sure if a sett is active, take a look around and see if you can see any footprints in the surrounding mud or any fresh dung. This photo was taken by Paul Cassidy, our Ecology and Conservation Manager), of badger prints on a development in Lincolnshire. If you look closely you can spot the badger’s kidney-shaped pad and toes and nail marks.
Badgers play an important role in our ecosystem by helping maintain and regenerate soil health through foraging and sett building. Additionally, they help disperse seeds through their dung like other berry-eating animals. Their setts can also provide refuge for other wildlife too!
We are lucky enough to have some badger setts under our management which we carefully monitor and manage. We have installed night-vision trail cameras, and spotted a few badgers roaming around on the public open space:
About Meadfleet
Meadfleet are a leading sustainable land-adopting management company. We have in-house ecologists with expertise in the BNG metric and are already applying the principles of Biodiversity Net Gain across our existing open space portfolio in England and Wales. Established in 1995, Meadfleet manage over 330 developments and 42,000 residential properties in our portfolio, with a strong balance sheet.
Meadfleet offers management of Biodiversity Net Gain delivery both on a managed development and on offsite areas, either via customer contributions or commuted sums. Our adoption model relieves developers of ongoing liabilities and management costs.
The Meadfleet model removes onerous liabilities from homeowners yet still encourages their input and engagement into the management of their local environment. We are committed to providing an excellent service to residents as demonstrated by our Excellent rating on Trustpilot and are members of The Property Ombudsman Scheme (TPOS), offering customers free, independent redress should they feel it is required. We are happy to work with residents groups and positively encourage the creation of these on the developments we are involved with. We believe this opens an effective two-way dialogue between homeowners and ourselves.
As a land-adopting management company, Meadfleet take long-term responsibility of open space, building customer and community relations and implementing perpetual management and improvement plans. We take a holistic and independent approach to managing areas of open space for the benefit of all residents, biodiversity and the wider environment.