What is badger baiting?
In 2024, a staggering 75% of our investigations involved crimes against badgers.
The price of a so-called ‘sport’. Badger baiting sees small, terrier-type dogs sent down badger setts to find badgers and hold them at bay while the baiters dig them out. Once exposed, badgers are dragged out and attacked immediately or sold to underground baiting rings, often for more than £500.
In the associated practice of ‘lamping’, hunters use spotlights to momentarily mesmerise badgers in the beam, before unleashing dogs to kill them.
To make things worse, badgers are often deliberately injured before the fight, breaking their jaws, teeth or limbs, just to make the fight last longer. The badgers always die, frightened and in excruciating pain. Sometimes the dogs die too, or suffer terrible wounds, often stitched up by their owners without an anaesthetic.
You can listen to our Campaign Manager, Jim, talking about the illegal practice of badger baiting.
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Understanding the problem – current legislation
Badger baiting was made illegal in 1835 under the Cruelty to Animals Act and badgers have been granted further protection by the Protection of Badgers Act 1992. Since 2009, badger persecution has been classified as a priority by the National Wildlife Crime Unit, but as ever, enacting legislation and enforcing it are very different things.
What is the Protection of Badgers Act 1992?
Unlicensed sett interference is as simple as it sounds. Natural England issues licences to scientists, ecologists, builders, planners and the police. This gives the required permissions for setts to be legally disturbed.
Badger sett interference under the Protection of Badgers Act 1992 states it is an offence by doing any of the following things:
- to damage a badger sett or any part of it,
- to destroy a badger sett, obstructing access to, or any entrance of, a badger sett,
- to cause a dog to enter a badger sett;
- to disturb a badger when it is occupying a badger sett.
For the offence to be complete, it must be proven that the sett is active.
It is not unusual for those involved in the illegal activity of fox hunting to ensure badger setts are blocked to prevent a fox from fleeing from hounds and seeking shelter.
Despite the National Police Chief’s Council’s Wildlife and Rural Crime Strategy for 2022-2025, being published and signed off by every Chief Constable and Police and Crime Commissioner, the Home Office is still failing to collect vital information about badger baiting.
In Scotland and Northern Ireland, wildlife crime is already recorded accurately and consistently. However, in England and Wales, badger baiting is classed as a ‘summary only offence’, the same police crime recording standard as ‘being drunk and disorderly’ or a ‘low-level’ motoring offence.
Badger baiting - the suffering
In 2024, nearly 78% of our investigations involved some form of badger persecution.
Badger baiting usually involves several people digging into an active sett to capture the badgers using small terrier-type breed dogs. These dogs are often sent underground with electronic ‘locator devices’ to find the badgers. The locator device is then tracked from above, allowing the badger diggers to know where to dig down to retrieve the cornered badger. Sometimes, badger setts can collapse before the diggers can retrieve their dog, and many dogs have died in this way.
Badgers will always defend themselves and their young cubs, and the dogs used to attack badgers can also suffer the most horrific injuries. These injuries, known as ‘degloving’, are caused by the badger biting up at the dog’s face.
Badger diggers often use homemade barbaric metal tools and chains to – secure a captured badger. Diggers will know that if a badger gets a chance to protect itself, they, too, will become victim to the badger’s attempt to defend itself.
Dogs, as well as badgers, suffer too
Dogs used in badger baiting and wildlife crime are bred and used as a ‘tool’. These dogs are sadly just commodities to their owners. They can be kept in filthy conditions outside in kennels with no genuine care or emotion attached to their welfare.
These dogs are trained from a young age to attack badges, and those that do not meet the grade are disposed of, either by being left for the badger to kill or killed by their owners. Badger baiters train these dogs by often releasing a badger into an enclosed area or chaining them to a tree or fencepost and encouraging the dogs to attack them.
Even when these dogs suffer horrific injuries caused by badger baiting, they seldom receive the correct veterinary treatment, and their owners often use unlicensed medications to try and treat them themselves.
You can read about Operation Major and how we’re working with our partners to raise awareness of dogs used in the commission of wildlife cri
Badger baiting – the numbers
The UK Badger Crime Tactical Delivery Group (BTDG records incidents of badger persecution in England and Wales.
In Autumn 2025, Wildlife and Countryside Link published its Wildlife Crime Report 2025, summarising wildlife crime in England and Wales using data collected during 2024. The latest data from the report indicates that:
- Badger sett interference was the most common offence, making up nearly 57% of all badger crime incidents (2020–2024).
- Baiting, fighting, and digging accounted for around 13.5% of cases.
- Hunting with dogs and lamping made up about 2.2% of incidents.
- Wildlife crime remains underreported and poorly recorded, meaning the true scale of badger persecution is likely higher than official figures suggest
More detailed information on badger sett interference and other forms of reported badger crime can be found in the report.
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