BADGER ABUNDANCE AND ACTIVITY IN RELATION TO FRAGMENTATION OF FORAGING BIOTOPES

Eurasian badgers (Meles meles) living in the southern boreal forest of Sweden prefer to forage in patches of agricultural land (AL). In two adjacent areas with different proportion AL, capture-recapture studies from spring 1989 and 1991, and track-board surveys from spring 1991 a nd autumn 1993, showed that both population density and the frequency of track-board visits were higher in the richer area. In 1993, one eve n richer and one poorer area were included in the track-board survey t o increase the variance in proportion and patchiness of AL. Also in th e richest area of these, the proportion of track-board visits was high . However, this was also the case in the poorest area. More track-boar ds were visited in or close to agricultural patches than expected from random. Among the areas, this preference increased with decreasing pr oportion of AL available, except in the poorest area where no preferen ce could be detected. We argue that the observed pattern was a result of: 1) decreasing population density, 2) increasing activity and large r individual home ranges, and 3) a change in biotope preference, as th e degree of biotope fragmentation increased and the possibility of eff icient utilisation of the preferred patches decreased.