Ecology Resources were commissioned by Historic England to monitor three entrance holes that had potential to be a badger sett on an undisclosed site in the East Midlands.
Historic England informed us that the job involved the excavation of a trench for archaeological purposes, within 30m of this potential sett. It turns out that this wasn’t just your typical site… the monitoring was to be conducted on the site of the “find of the century”, a recently uncovered Roman mosaic and villa.
Our remit was to ascertain whether the potential sett was occupied by badgers. Ecology Resources conducted a 21-day camera trapping exercise to see if it was being used.
Now, as much as we love archaeology, we were there to look for badgers. So, what did we find?
Our cameras picked up a scuffle that could have potentially been a single badger having a nosey around the site, and this polecat.
One of our ecologists also found a sharpened flint tool, which would have been used to scrape animal hides all those years ago. This was placed in the safe hands of the archaeologists on site.
Having undertaken the necessary suite of monitoring surveys, it was determined that the entrance holes were not being used by badgers, and thus it was not an active badger sett (or a polecat residence). Historic England were then allowed to continue their important archaeological dig.
All works were undertaken under Natural England guidelines and adhered to the ‘Protection of Badgers Act 1992’. Client confidentiality is always a priority at Ecology Resources, so whether it’s a badger sett, an historic find or both, you can trust us to use absolute discretion.