You cannot simply remove badgers from your property in the UK. Badgers and their setts are protected under the Protection of Badgers Act 1992, which makes it illegal to kill, injure, take, or disturb them without a specific licence. What you can do is make your garden less attractive to them and install physical barriers that encourage them to forage elsewhere. If badgers have set up a sett on your land and you need it removed, you’ll need to apply for a licence from Natural England (or the equivalent body in Scotland or Wales).
Why You Can’t Just Remove Them
The Protection of Badgers Act 1992 is unusually broad. It’s an offence to wilfully kill, injure, or take a badger. It’s also illegal to damage, destroy, or obstruct access to a badger sett, or even to disturb a badger while it’s occupying one. Being “reckless” about whether your actions would cause these outcomes is enough to be charged. You don’t need to intend harm.
The law also covers seemingly minor interference. Blocking an entrance hole, sending a dog into a sett, or digging near an active sett all count as offences. Even possessing a dead badger or any part of one is illegal without a licence. Penalties include fines and up to six months in prison per offence.
Confirm It’s Actually Badgers
Before taking any steps, make sure badgers are the problem. Their entrance holes are distinctive: D-shaped rather than round, and they don’t narrow inside the way rabbit holes do. An active sett will have polished, smooth sides around the entrance from repeated use, freshly dug soil heaps nearby, and sometimes clumps of grass or other bedding material pulled close to the opening. You’ll often see well-worn paths radiating out from the sett toward feeding areas and latrines.
Badger footprints have five toes arranged in front of a large kidney-shaped pad. The fifth toe sometimes tucks in and won’t show in every print. Other telltale signs include shallow holes dug across your lawn where they’ve been rooting for worms, scratched fence posts, and patches of worn moss on walls where they’ve been climbing over.
Remove What’s Attracting Them
Badgers are nocturnal, primarily active between dusk and dawn. They visit gardens for food, and the single most effective long-term strategy is cutting off the food supply. Earthworms are a major part of their diet, and while you can’t eliminate worms from your soil, you can target the other larvae that draw badgers in.
Leatherjackets (crane fly larvae) and chafer grubs living just below the turf surface are a powerful attractant. Badgers tear up lawns to reach them. You can treat these infestations with nematodes, microscopic roundworms that move through wet soil and kill the grubs. For leatherjackets, apply nematodes in April through June, then again in September through early November. For chafer grubs, the window is late July into early August. A rate of roughly 500,000 nematodes per square metre is standard, and most garden centres sell ready-to-mix packs. Once the grub population drops, badgers have far less reason to dig up your lawn.
Beyond lawn grubs, avoid leaving pet food outside overnight. Secure compost bins so badgers can’t access food scraps. Pick up fallen fruit promptly, especially in autumn, since badgers rely heavily on fleshy fruits from September through February as an easy supplemental food source. Bird feeders that scatter seed on the ground are another draw.
Install Badger-Proof Fencing
Physical barriers are the most reliable way to keep badgers out of a specific area. Government specifications for badger-proof fencing call for at least 1 metre of height above ground, with a lower section buried 600mm deep: 300mm straight down into the soil, and the bottom 300mm bent outward in an L-shape facing the direction the badgers approach from. This prevents them digging under. On uneven ground, increase the buried depth to 500mm with an equal length turned outward.
Use chain link or welded mesh with a minimum wire gauge of 2.5mm. Anything thinner and badgers can bite or pull through it. They’re strong diggers with powerful claws, so lightweight chicken wire won’t hold up. Make sure the fence sits flush with the ground along its entire length, since badgers will exploit even small gaps. Where fencing meets gates, the same buried mesh standard applies.
Fencing an entire property boundary is expensive, so many people fence off just the area they most want to protect, like a vegetable patch or a section of ornamental lawn.
Other Deterrents Worth Trying
Motion-activated lights and sprinklers can startle badgers and discourage repeat visits, though determined animals often get used to them over time. These work best as a short-term measure while you address the underlying food sources. Solar-powered ultrasonic deterrent devices are widely sold for this purpose, but results are mixed. Some gardeners report success combining a sprinkler with citronella-soaked rags placed along known entry points, since badgers dislike strong smells. None of these methods are as reliable as fencing or food source removal, but layering several together improves your chances.
When You Need a Licence
If a badger sett is on your property and it’s causing structural problems, or if you need to carry out construction or forestry work near one, you can apply to Natural England for a licence to interfere with the sett. Licences are granted for specific purposes: development, land management, forestry, or preventing serious damage to property. The Forestry Commission, for example, operates under a class licence that permits work within 20 metres of a sett, including during the breeding season.
For private landowners, the process involves submitting an application that details exactly what you need to do, why it’s necessary, and what steps you’ll take to minimise disturbance. Natural England must confirm your registration in writing before you do anything. The most common licensed activity is a sett closure, which involves carefully excluding badgers from the sett using one-way gates over a period of weeks, then blocking the entrances. This is only permitted during certain months outside the breeding season. Anyone convicted of a wildlife offence since January 2010 is generally ineligible for a licence.
If the sett isn’t causing structural damage and you simply want badgers to stop visiting your garden, a licence isn’t the right route. Focus on fencing and food source management instead. For most people dealing with torn-up lawns and raided bins, those two approaches together solve the problem within a season.