Do animals cross the road or do we drive through their forest? Hundreds of animals in Drenthe do not survive the crossing every year, from buzzards and badgers to deer and foxes. The Badger Working Group Drenthe closely monitors how many badgers are hit and whether there are nursing mothers among them.
Volunteers from the working group locate the orphaned badgers and are busy every day to prevent the young animals from starving to death.
Volunteer at the badger work group Harry Boerma shows a dangerous stretch of road between Borger and Eext. “The animals, including badgers, come out of the forest there and cross this road to the feeding area on the other side. This is a dead badger from about a year and a half ago. The animal was hit by a car, the badger’s biggest enemy.” Only the skeleton is still visible just next to the road.
The tie change runs up against the slope. Behind it is the N34. Boerma: “You can see that it is very active and that they come here almost every evening. You see rooting spots where they look for earthworms, the badger’s staple food. And a latrine.” There is an intersection on top of the slope. “Here the animal has to decide for itself whether it goes left, right or straight ahead.” Straight ahead means straight onto the Hunebed Highway.
This point shows how important tunnels and grids are for badger survival. “Normally the badgers use a culvert under the road,” says Boerma. “But that diver has now become an obstacle because there is water in it. They don’t like wet feet and that means they go over the road. Grids and fauna passages encourage badgers, foxes, martens and other animals to get to the other side safely. Unfortunately, the province has forgotten to build them here.”