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Assessing spatiotemporal associations in the occurrence of badger–human conflict in England

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Abstract

Examples from a variety of taxa demonstrate that under certain circumstances, the exclusion or translocation of ‘problem’ animals is ineffective in resolving human–wildlife conflicts and may even elicit new problems elsewhere. Damage caused by badger setts (burrows) is an important source of human–wildlife conflict in the UK and is commonly managed by excluding badgers from all or part of problem setts. We used records of licences issued for the management of such problems and a novel statistical approach to assess spatiotemporal associations between problem cases in England from 2002 to 2005. We predicted that management at urban badgers' setts, and particularly exclusion of badgers from urban main setts, would give rise to subsequent problems at focal setts and in neighbouring areas. Frequencies of problems occurring at individual setts were similar in urban and rural areas. In areas neighbouring setts subjected to management action, the background frequency of problems was higher in urban than in rural areas, reflecting the occurrence of problems at a higher proportion of urban setts. The frequency of new cases arising at or in the vicinity of managed setts within a critical time period after management action was not significantly different from the background frequency of problems for any combination of land use, sett type and management approach. This finding suggests that the measures currently employed for managing problem setts do not importantly increase the likelihood of problems reoccurring in the same location or emerging nearby.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Dylan Poole and Ashley Matthews for their roles in the initial provision and processing of data on licensed operations and Paul Butt, Rodney Calvert, Claire Dowding, Mary Hunter, David Trump and two anonymous consultants for sett-exclusion cost estimates. This work was supported by Defra WSC under contract WM0304, the Estonian Ministry of Education and Sciences (target financing grant TLOOM0122), the Estonian Science Foundation (grant number GLOOM0058J) and the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund (Centre of Excellence FIBIR).

Ethical standards

The management actions that provided the data used in this study were carried out in compliance with the laws of the United Kingdom.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, University of Tartu, Vanemuise 46, Tartu, 51014, Estonia

    John Davison

  2. Department of Biology and Environmental Science, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9QG, UK

    John Davison & Timothy J. Roper

  3. Natural England, Renslade House, Exeter, EX4 3AW, UK

    Charles J. Wilson

  4. Natural England, Blenheim Office Park, Long Hanborough, Oxford, OX29 8LN, UK

    Matthew J. Heydon

  5. The Food and Environment Research Agency, Sand Hutton, York, YO41 1LZ, UK

    Richard J. Delahay

Authors
  1. John Davison
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  2. Timothy J. Roper
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  3. Charles J. Wilson
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  4. Matthew J. Heydon
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  5. Richard J. Delahay
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to John Davison.

Additional information

Communicated by C. Gortázar

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Online Resource 1

R scripts and functions used in the analyses (TXT 9 kb)

Online Resource 2

Observed K (Ko; see “Methods” section for calculation) for neighbouring cases at different spatial scales in urban and rural areas, standardised by subtracting the corresponding median expected K value (Ke; see “Methods” section for calculation). A standardised 95% confidence limit (dashed line) for Ke was calculated in the same way. Only instances where Ko exceeded the 95% confidence limit for Ke at some spatial scales are shown: (a) for all urban setts subjected to ‘other interference’ management action; (b) for urban main setts subjected to ‘other interference’ management action; (c) for urban outlier setts subjected to ‘other interference’ management action; (d) for rural outlier setts subjected to ‘other interference’ management action. (JPEG 74 kb)

Online Resource 3

Sensitivity of the K statistic to increasing numbers of simulated urban neighbouring cases (see “Methods” section for details): (a) no extra cases, (b) ten extra cases, (c) 20 extra cases, (d) 30 extra cases, and (e) 40 extra cases. The layout of the figures is the same as in Online Resource 2. Asterisks indicate raw one-tailed P values at the spatial scale of 800 m: * P < 0.05; ** P < 0.01 (JPEG 92 kb)

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Davison, J., Roper, T.J., Wilson, C.J. et al. Assessing spatiotemporal associations in the occurrence of badger–human conflict in England. Eur J Wildl Res 57, 67–76 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10344-010-0400-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10344-010-0400-2

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