Spatial Organization and Behaviour of Badgers (Meles meles) in a Moderate-Density Population

Badgers are carnivores that show considerable variation in their social and spatial organization. At the westernmost part of their range, in Britain and Ireland, variation in spatial organization appears to be determined by the availability of resources. However, the majority of studies has focussed at one end of the social/spatial spectrum, where population densities are high and adjacent territories are contiguous and non-overlapping. To examine whether the same limiting factors appear to apply across a wider range of badger densities, we established a study site in a predominantly coniferous habitat within an upland area of northeast England, where population densities were predicted to be low. Seasonal home ranges of individual badgers were largest in autumn, followed by summer and spring, then winter. This pattern is reflective of the likely seasonal changes in food availability within the area, as opposed to being related to breeding patterns. There were also significant correlations between territory size and the number of grassland patches (positive) and the proportion of grassland (negative), which are consistent with predictions from the Resource Dispersion Hypothesis. Although badgers at the site were living at low to moderate densities relative to many other studied populations in Britain, they showed patterns of spatial organization that were close to those of high-density populations. The nature of the relationship between resource availability and abundance patterns is likely to have important consequences for the conservation and management of badgers and other species that show flexible spatial organization.