Too many holes! Why badgers are digging up Britain’s lovingly maintained golf courses
Name:Badgers.
Age: European badgers live for five to eight years in the wild. They have been in the UK, where this story is set, for half to three-quarters of a million years.
Appearance: Black and white mustelid anarcho-syndicalists.
Hardly. Badgers are quite posh, aren’t they? Well, perhaps. But everyone has their breaking point, and now I must inform you that badgers have become embroiled in an aggressive form of anti-capitalist class warfare.
What turned them? The cost of living? The rise of the billionaire class? Close, but no. It was the drought.
How so? This has been a historically hot summer in the UK. England and Wales endured the driest July since records began (1836). All the grass is brown and dead. There are wildfires everywhere and 26 million people are living with a hosepipe ban.
It’s awful. Yes, especially for the badgers. Most of their food lives underground, and it’s much harder to get to it when the earth has been baked dry by the sun.
So what’s the solution? That’s easy: turn over a few golf courses.
Are they really into clubhouse sandwiches? Not when there are nice wet lawns to tear up.
Why do golf courses have wet lawns during a drought? The Water Use (Temporary Bans) Order 2010 permits exemptions for watering sports turf. That means that while you are carefully sharing your bathwater, your local golf course is hosing its lush greens.
Yes, but the badgers. Oh, right. Well, if you’re a badger and you need to dig up some worms, and all the ground is hard except for golf courses, where do you think you’re going to get your worms?
From golf courses? That’s right! Jim Croxton, chief executive of the British and International Golf Greenkeepers Association, says: “Badgers generally dig turf to find food and August is the beginning of the period when chafer grubs are generally present.”
Is it a widespread problem? Golf courses from Suffolk to Staffordshire to Worcestershire have reported greens being torn up by badgers, according to the Telegraph.
This sounds like a victimless crime. You would think so, but the golf courses are very upset about it.
How upset? A video of one ripped-up course posted to Facebook prompted the furious comment: “They’re a f*ckin pest, I’ve had countless ornamental lawns wrecked by these f*ckers.”
Quite right. Will nobody think of the ornamental lawns? Exactly. It’s clear that there needs to be an urgent change to the law.
To what? Well, it obviously isn’t fair that golf courses are exempt from the hosepipe ban in a time of national crisis.
But then the badgers would have nowhere to eat, and they would die. No they wouldn’t. Badgers are enterprising creatures. They’d find a way.
Do say: “The badgers have absolutely massacred hole nine.”
Don’t say: “Four legs good, golf clubs bad.”
Reporting from The Guardian contributed to this story.
