Home Range Size and Attributes for Badgers (Taxidea taxus jeffersonii) in South-Central British Columbia, Canada

In Canada, the jeffersonii subspecies of the North American badger, Taxidea taxus, is found only within the southern portion of the province of British Columbia. The subspecies is considered endangered and small populations are believed to be the result of a loss of grassland habitat along the valley bottoms; despite this, knowledge of the basic ecology of the animal is limited. We used radio-telemetry to document the size, configuration and attributes of home ranges of the animal living in south-central British Columbia. Home range size was particularly large (x¯ = 78.6 km2, n = 9), and individuals were capable of moving greater distances than has been reported outside the province (x¯ = 645 m over 12 h in summer, sd = 985.3). Even though our sample size was small and heavily biased towards males, we found that the animals did not use their home ranges uniformly, and there was considerable variation in the patterns of use between individuals. We therefore argue that an important first step in understanding the basic ecology of these animals is to recognize the high degree of individual variation in landscape use.