\n A sett on an unmade road in the West Wight was filled with concrete at some point on Friday, January 30.\n<\/p>\n
\n The sett has collapsed, the Isle of Wight Badger Trust said, and the incident reported to police as a wildlife crime.\n<\/p>\n
\n The local ecology officer has also been informed.\n<\/p>\n
\n Graham Lee, from the IW Badger Trust, said: “This comes just five months after a police investigation at this same sett after two entrance holes were deliberately filled in.”\n<\/p>\n
\n As previously reported by the County Press, police launched an investigation\u00a0after active badger setts were ‘needlessly’\u00a0interfered with in August last year.\n<\/p>\n
\n Badgers and their setts (tunnels and chambers where they live) are protected by law, under the Protection of Badgers Act 1992.\n<\/p>\n
\n Filling in their setts carries a potential prison sentence and an unlimited fine.\n<\/p>\n
\n Graham said there is a need for licensed work to put a large metal plate over the road, to safeguard the badger sett and to make sure the residents will still be able to drive their cars.\n<\/p>\n
\n However, as it is breeding season, licensed work cannot be undertaken until after July 1, he said.\n<\/p>\n
\n “The other problem – the unmade road has no registered owner with Land Registry, and residents don’t want to take responsibility for the costs of licensed work.\n<\/p>\n
\n “Understandably it is a difficult situation for the residents, but there have been many years to get this sorted professionally, rather than keep on illegally interfering with the sett.”\n<\/p>\n
\n A spokesperson for Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary said: “We received reports around 9.13am yesterday (Saturday) of a badger sett being filled in with concrete in the Freshwater area.\n<\/p>\n
\n “Enquiries are ongoing to establish the circumstances of the incident.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A sett on an unmade road in the West Wight was filled with concrete at some point on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-403169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}