Full report on the day’s events and what led up to them will come soon, so watch this space. In the meantime, blocked setts were found out at the North Cotswold Hunt meet on Wednesday near to another active sett where terriermen were caught attempting to dig out a fox during a cubhunting meet in October. Quadbikes were heard out at 6am by sett-blocking patrols on the land.
We use this opportunity to post again about our articles (which can be found in the static pages on this website) ‘Terrierwork: Past and Present’ and ‘Hunts vs Badgers’, both of which cover some of the incidents which we deal with in regards to blocked badger setts and terrierwork out with the hunts in the three counties, along with more information and quotes from hunters regarding blocking setts.
We’ve recently put up a few ‘clarification posts’, a bit like responding to frequently asked questions. One of these referred to badger setts and whether it was unlawful to unblock them. We’ve put together a video from the 28th December of sabs unblocking the sett found blocked (pictured above) and will also copy the post about unblocking setts here…
“Information on the legislation which protects badgers and their setts can be found at legislation.gov.uk and at gov.uk itself. The Protection of Badgers Act 1992 came in to close up gaps in previous legislation which did not protect setts, just the badgers themselves.
The law states that DAMAGING or BLOCKING setts is an offence but does not list unblocking of setts as an offence, Obviously when we unblock setts, we are only removing items that have been put into the entrances, whether they are tree stumps, staves, clods of earth or bricks, etc. and we are not causing further damage to the entrances.