Badgers

#funfactfriday

Despite badgers having a short stature, they are actually are quite fast, reaching speeds of up to 30km/h! Their speed, along with strong forearms, long claws, and sharp teeth can make them tough competitors and they can definitely hold their own with larger animals they feel threatened by. Despite all this though, badgers are not dangerous and almost always try to run away from a threat first.

As winter settles in, badgers will slow down, but they don’t actually hibernate. Instead, they undergo short periods of torpor (a deep sleep that slows their metabolism) that last about 29 hours. As they will usually go out hunting in between torpor periods, most winter badgers sightings happen during the day, in contrast to the generally nocturnal habits they have during the rest of the year

Badgers are considered endangered in BC with fewer than 30 individuals left in the Okanagan valley. This decline in badgers has also contributed to declines in other species, like Burrowing Owls, since these owls use old badger burrows as nesting sites once the badger has left. As the number of badgers in the valley dropped, so did the number of burrows, which made nesting sites more and more scarce for the owls. Eventually, in the early 1980s, there were so few adequate nesting burrows on the landscape that Burrowing Owls disappeared from BC completely.