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badgers; nowadays only 40% are in use.
This depressing fact is one of the results of
the second Essex Badger Survey: some 410
badger setts had been previously mapped by
Cowlin (1972) and others as the Essex
contribution to the National Badger Survey and
members of the Essex Field Club and the Badger
Group of the Essex Naturalists' Trust have just
finished re—surveying all of them. Additional
locations were extracted from the notes, past
and present, of badger—watchers all over the
county, and new setts were discovered in the
search for old ones. When all these sources
were taken into account, some 790 sett records
existed for Essex.
Unfortunately, actual sett numbers are lower
than the recorded figure: 188 setts have gone
and .56 have become derelict; 31% of all
recorded setts are unavailable or untenable to
badgers.
Readers may wonder how this situation has
arisen: few setts have gone as a result of
direct persecution, the majority having gone
through farming operations and housing
development. The decline in the proportion of
active setts is more difficult to explain; no
single cause for this decline has yet been
found. It is likely that a combination of
factors, such as increased traffic flow, the
use of pesticides, habitat loss and disturbance
at the sett have had an effect on sett activity
in the long term. The barbarous "sport" of
badger digging has had an effect upon activity
levels in the areas where it is known to
occur; readers are asked to be vigilant and