Badgers are highly social mammals living in underground setts, and their welfare is affected by road mortality, persecution, and culling programmes.
Badger welfare encompasses both the welfare of individual animals and the welfare impacts on their complex social groups. Disruption of sett social structure through badger removal can have population-level welfare effects beyond the individual. Culling by shooting has known welfare risks including wounding rates when carcass recovery is impossible. Road traffic is the largest human-caused source of badger mortality and injury, with injured badgers often dying slowly in roadside vegetation. Wildlife hospitals treat significant numbers of injured badgers, and road ecology measures including badger tunnels under roads have been shown to reduce mortality in high-risk areas.