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Rare badger found dead along Highway 97 in West Kelowna

Sad end for rare badger

Cindy White

Not long after someone sent a video to Castanet showing a rare badger rambling along the side of Highway 97 in West Kelowna, one of the animals has been found dead along the road.

Badgers are an endangered species in BC. Conservation efforts have been underway for years in the region to try to bolster the population. It’s estimated there are only between 300 and 400 of them left in this province.

“They are actually our rarest carnivore in the province, not a whole lot of them around. In the Okanagan they’re quite rare,” said Richard Weir, Carnivore Conservation Specialist, Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy.

There’s a lot of people and a lot of highways in the Okanagan and they don’t fare too well when you get those two things combined. We think in the Okanagan, there’s probably less than 50 in total,” added Weir.

Badgers tend to have a very large hunting territory, and that’s why they end up having to cross roads and highways frequently.

Weir notes when Badgers come to a road, they don’t stop and look both ways. “Badgers are a member of the weasel family and they have really big egos and so they don’t think anything is going to hurt them. So, they just kinda go across. That doesn’t work out well when there’s a Mack truck barreling down on you.”

Nathan Early posted the picture of the dead creature to a naturalists website and told Castanet it was a sad way to encounter his first badger.



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