American Badger
June 22, 2017 – Stories shared and repeated over the years of a farmer getting a glimpse or a truck driver seeing one along a quiet rural roadway in the middle of the night in western Iroquois county was enough to keep that hope of photographing one of these apex predators, that nocturnal phantom of the prairie, on my wish list of a possible photographic encounter. Before the first settlers came to the prairies of Illinois the badger was thought to be abundant through the northern two-thirds of the state. But with the cultivation of the prairies and pasture lands needed for livestock the badger became a target and were nearly wiped out by the late 1800’s reducing them to a small population in the northern third of Illinois.
By the 1950’s the badger had rebound and had actually expanded its’ range south into southern Illinois, although less abundant. As it turns out, according to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, the sand prairies of northwestern and central Illinois have the highest populations. These days the badgers make use of railroad rights-of-way, ditches , fence rows and areas along less traveled roads for its’ burrows while using these same areas for hunting small game, nesting birds and other burrowing mammals. The American badger has an average weight from 12-25 pounds but a large male can reach 50 pounds with a 30” length. The front feet of the badger are larger then their rear feet and have 2” claws.
Those claws on their front feet along with their strong neck and shoulder muscles make them powerful diggers using their rear feet to propel the dirt to a pile behind them. I have heard their digging activity described as a buzz saw cutting into the ground as they disappear into a new excavation at an amazing speed.
Badger tunnels have been measured going 12 feet down and over twice that in length. Although it is rare for anyone to even see a badger the few studies that have been done suggest that they have most likely adapted to live within these fragments of habitat that can offer some protection and have the food source that is required for these carnivores to scratch out an existence in the least touched areas like CRP, ditches, fence rows and uncut edges of roadways between the modern agricultural fields of Illinois.
American Badger