Badger Trust is deeply concerned by the recent statement from the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) claiming that 42% of Curlew and Lapwing nest predation is caused by badgers. This interpretation is both misleading and damaging, and risks fuelling harmful narratives against a legally protected species.
The recent press release by the GWCT and related media headlines give the impression that badgers are now a leading, widespread threat to red-listed waders across Britain. However, the underlying peer-reviewed study is based on just one farmland site and one species (the Northern Lapwing), and shows that even there badger-driven nest losses were minimal (about 6% of nests over six years), and heavily clustered in a single cold, low-earthworm year. In warmer, normal years, badger predation was minimal or absent.
The study’s own findings highlight that predation risk is strongly weather and prey-dependent, not a constant. Accordingly, it seems more scientifically honest to treat badger impacts as an occasional predator, not a major one, and the idea that they are a leading cause of wader declines is not supported by the data.
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