"I have been but little in," said Ninian hastily...

The UK government is delaying but not halting plans to kill up to 70% of badgers in some areas.

This and other articles and comments point out that Ireland, which practices badger eradication like the UK, still has bovine TB problems. But Germany, which does not kill huge swathes of its badger population, has no bovine TB problem.

Crazy idea here, but why not vaccinate cattle against TB?

British Army terrorises Iraqi villagers with...badgers?

EDIT: Fixed HTML. Also, I should mention that vikingcat put me onto the story!

It struck me that I don't have any icons of badgers in the snow which, since my journal is named winterbadger, is quite an omission.

Now, of course, badgers like to stay warm and dry in their setts during the winter whenever possible (though late winter is badger mating season, so they're out and about a good bit more then), and they're nocturnal and shy to begin with, so there aren't a lot of snowy badger photos out there. But I found three, on sites from Scotland, Wales, and one from the UK but showing a Russian badger. I also found this nice site about badgers.

If you have the time, please do visit these sites and please consider supporting a badger- or other wildlife-protection group. Wild animals are having an increasingly difficult time, as more and more land is "developed" and creatures who would not normally come into contact with humans do so, often to the disadvantage of the wild creatures.

Edit: Steve Clark of Gwent Badger Group kindly allowed me to use his copywritten badger photo for one of my icons; to see the original, go to this page.