A generous helping of peanut butter is being used to guide badgers through special gates in a fence surrounding a new woodland of 50,000 native trees planted in 100 acres near Edinburgh.
The animals can be stubborn creatures and tend to follow established trails, so a little of their favoured food has been smeared on the new gates to encourage them to come through into Scotland’s First World War Centenary Wood in the Pentland Hills.
The Woodland Trust has designed the barrier to stop hares and rabbits damaging new plantations of trees, but without the tasty treat they fear the badgers will undermine the gate’s foundations by burrowing beneath it.
Site manager Russell Jobson said: “We need to maintain the fence to stop animals such as hares and rabbits damaging young trees, and the gates stop badgers from undermining it.
“The gates are specially designed for badgers to push through instead of digging under the fence wire. They are quite stubborn creatures and can take a while to adjust.”
More than 50,000 native trees will be planted over 100 acres, connecting existing woodland and proving new habitat for wildlife.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here