Comment: Just this week I wrote to a national newspaper regarding badgers pulling out pollinators' nests in the hedgerow banks round my farm. I attached photographs of a destroyed nest my son found on Sunday. Since Sunday I have found another 2 nests destroyed in the same 150m stretch of hedgerow. There is a very active badger set 4 fields away. We have overgrown hedges and hay meadows full of flowers and to my knowledge none of my neighbours use practices that would damage pollinators. However despite our encouragement there is nothing we can do to protect them from the ever increasing badger population. I told the paper that since I was a teenager walking this land in the 1960's the badger population has changed from 1 set about 2 miles away to 4 sets on the farm or within 200m.
Luckily we don't have a TB problem in the immediate area at present but the ecological damage done by the disproportionate badger population to pollinators and ground nesting birds is very serious indeed.