Matt Pendry of The Ecology Consultancy recently delivered a talk on badgers to a couple of lucky classes at a boys school in Berkshire, in order to promote ecology to the younger generation. His talks covered topics including badger behaviour, their preferred habitat and how to identify them.
A popular aspect of the talk with the boys aged 9 and 10, was the identification of badger field signs. This was presented by Matt in two games. The first involved matching footprints with the animals that made them using pictures and a couple of clues from us. While the difference between mink and otter footprints may have been a little tricky to identify, the majority of groups scored very well and all identified the badger’s distinctive wide foot print with five toes.
Matt says, “It was my second game, which I called ‘Whose poo’s whose?’ that was the most popular with the boys! It involved matching pictures of animal droppings with the animals that produced them, using clues within the information provided”.Badger dung pit
Finally, Matt showed the children some of our camera-trap footage of badgers. The boys thoroughly enjoyed seeing badgers playfully rolling about and inquisitively sniffing the cameras.
He adds, “These talks were a great opportunity to engage the younger generation in ecology and hopefully their enthusiasm for nature displayed in these sessions, will stay with them”.
