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Please remember always to be very discreet who you tell about badger setts, especially their precise location. There are people about who enjoy digging badgers (usually with terriers) and who cause untold suffering to these fascinating and harmless creatures.

If you think you see anybody badger digging, or carrying spades and with terrier dogs in areas near to a sett, please call the police using 999 and a badger group contact without delay.  If this proves difficult, then contact the Police Wildlife Crime Officer, Simon Towers, on 01608 648715 or 0781 3695701

You should be ready to give the following details:

• how many men, and what are their descriptions?
• do they have dogs with them, and if so how many and what sort?
• exactly where are they?
• do you know if they have a vehicle parked nearby?
• if so, the make, model, colour and registration number, and where it is parked
• anything else which will help attending police to locate the suspects

If you come across an injured badger within the county, please phone the local contact for the area you are in. If you come across an injured badger anywhere else in the country, please call the RSPCA national reporting hotline on 0870 55 55 999 or a local veterinary surgeon or wildlife hospital.

If you find a dead badger, please notify the local contact for the area you are in, or complete a casualty report and send it to us. This is important whether it is lying at the side of the road, or elsewhere. If it has signs of having been snared, or injuries not consistent with being hit by a car, it is crucial that we are told as soon as possible, as well as the police or RSPCA.

It is especially important that we are told immediately of dead badgers in the spring time, as if the casualty is a lactating sow there may well be orphaned cubs left starving underground, which will need rescuing and rearing.