Who we are
Badger Trust exists to promote and enhance the welfare, conservation and protection of badgers, their setts, and their habitats. We are the leading voice for badgers in England and Wales, with a network of around 50 local voluntary badger groups, and supported by thousands of supporters and followers. We started as The National Federation of Badger Groups, which was formed in January 1986 and later evolved into Badger Trust in 2005. Despite significant progress made to legal protection for this iconic species, badgers across the UK are under threat more than ever before.
Badger Trust provides expert advice on all badger issues and works closely with the government, police, and other conservation organisations. We use all lawful means to campaign for the improved protection of badgers and are a member of Partnership for Action Against Wildlife Crime (PAW), Wildlife and Countryside Link and are represented on the UK Badger Persecution Priority Delivery Group of the National Wildlife Crime Unit.
The biggest threats to modern badgers are road traffic accidents, government sanctioned culling, wildlife crimes, developments, and habitat loss. At Badger Trust we provide outreach and education opportunities to schools, training to police forces and local groups, government outreach, support to local groups, press coverage on local and national levels, and drive national level campaigns to educate the public on issues affecting badgers and their habitats.
Our Mission
Our mission is to promote and enhance the welfare, conservation and protection of badgers, their setts and their habitats.
Our Vision
Our vision is a world where badgers are respected as part of our rich wildlife heritage, safe from persecution
Badger Trust is a small charity that is 100% funded by voluntary donations from local badger groups, supporters, and members of the public. We can't do any of our work without financial and campaign support from people like you. Getting involved with your local group and signing up for a monthly donation plan with the Badger Trust are two of the best ways you can help preserve this wonderful species for generations to come.
Find out all the great ways you can support Badger Trust by visiting our Get Involved page.
The Badger Trust Trustees
As a registered charity Badger Trust is governed according to charity law by a Board of Trustees. The trustees are also directors of Badger Trust according to company law.
All trustees are volunteers who give freely of their time and have no beneficial interest in the charity.
Trustees are responsible for setting Badger Trust’s strategic policies and objectives and for ensuring they are fulfilled.
Trustees are also responsible for keeping proper financial records. This enables them to ensure that financial statements comply with the Companies Act 2006. They safeguard the assets of the charity and take all reasonable steps to ensure the prevention and detection of fraud. They ensure that the charity is complying with all relevant laws and regulations.
To ensure trustees are sufficiently skilled to carry out its responsibilities, Badger Trust conducts a skills analysis of existing trustees before new ones are appointed. New trustees receive a full induction into Badger Trust’s work when they join, and continue to receive regular updates. Trustees receive any training deemed necessary to fully carry out their responsibilities.
Rosie Wood, Chair
Board member since 2021, Chair since 2023
Rosie has recently retired after a career in the public, private and voluntary sectors. Her time in the public sector ended at the beginning of 2020 when she retired from her role managing strategy for the Care Quality Commission, including regulation of the adult care sector.
Before that she had worked for District Audit, the Audit Commission as Head of Policy, Natural England and Defra, where as Policy Principal, Rosie led NE's work on the Climate Change Act and as Head of Function led a number of different areas of NE's responsibilities including, in her last posting, its approach to innovation and income. Seconded into Defra, Rosie successfully led new work resolving disputes between national infrastructure developers and regulators.
Having spent her early years in Chennai in southern India, Rosie has lived the rest of her life in the West Midlands, though her working life has mostly been in central London (she still likes trains!). Rosie now lives with her husband, Andrew, in a remote corner of the Shropshire Hills. As well as joining Badger Trust, she is the vice-chair for the Middle Marches Community Land Trust, a new organisation promoting rewilding and low intensity land management on the Welsh/English border. She hopes to do hands-on work caring for animals in a voluntary capacity. Her passion for animals informs her thinking on many issues and underpins her charity work.
Phil Loveday, Vice Chair
Board member since 2023, Vice-Chair since 2023
Phil was born in Oxfordshire but spent his formative years in Cheshire where his interest in badgers started. A degree in Biology and a PGCE led to a biology teacher post in Essex. His career has taken him around the country moving through Lincolnshire, Norfolk, York and then to Shropshire as a secondary school headteacher, joining different badger groups with each move.
As head of biology in Lincolnshire his lab was full of a range of animals from corn snakes to rats and thus the lab was always full of students who wanted to learn about and care for the animals.
Being involved in education is a mind filling profession, but one that provides so much fulfilment in seeing young people grow, develop and move on to the next stage of their lives. Being a biology teacher has meant that I can share my passion every single day and whilst there are lots of frustrations from working with young people, remembering that they are developing and helping them to form their behaviours and thought processes for the people they grow into is a real privilege.
Working with a secondary headteacher in the capital city of Tanzania to develop teaching, learning and leadership since 2011 has led to an attempt to learn Swahili and Phil is looking forward to spending more time in Tanzania after retirement, as well as developing his keen interest in wildlife photography and trailcamming further.
Phil is a member of the Shropshire Badger Group.
Eleanor Bullimore
Board member since 2021
Eleanor has worked in the charity sector for over a decade, primarily as a campaigner and latterly in communications and membership. As a campaigner she has worked on a variety of causes, from disability rights, to international development, to access to – and protection of – Britain’s countryside. Eleanor is a passionate advocate of campaigning organisations as important agents of change in our community, and especially in helping to give voice to marginalised groups.
Originally from Kent, Eleanor now lives in Gloucestershire where she enjoys living close to nature. Eleanor has a real love for nature and wildlife, and a particular fondness for badgers – even despite their regular raids on her sweetcorn crops. It is this fondness that has brought Eleanor to Badger Trust, where she hopes her background in campaigning can be put to good use in this time of crisis for Britain’s badger population.
Eleanor recently moved to be Director of Engagement at Friends of the Earth, and prior to that was Head of Membership and Marketing at the BSAVA (British Small Animal Veterinary Association) where she worked with veterinary professionals to further animal welfare by promoting excellence in small animal medicine and care.
Eleanor is a member of Gloucestershire Badger Group.
Janie Burrage
Board member since 2024
Janie has experience working for the public and third sectors in the northwest and southeast of England. As a project officer for environmental and sustainable transport charities, she has led volunteer groups delivering conversation tasks and set up walking groups to help people discover nature and access greenspaces on their doorstep. She has led competitions to promote active travel in the workplace and raise awareness of air quality around schools.
Alongside her work in the charity sector, Janie has maintained her skills as a children’s nurse. She currently holds the position of assistant director in a large creche. This allows her to combine her passion for people and wildlife, utilising a range of skills, including French language and Forest School.
Janie studied Wildlife Conservation for her BSc and has volunteered for The Wildlife Trusts, Woodland Trust, and South Lancashire Bat Group where she monitored a helpline for injured bats. Originally from Sussex, she encountered her first badger family here during training in 2017. She now splits her time between France and the UK, getting involved in nature campaigns wherever possible.
Georgina Cadwell
Board member since 2022
Georgie lives and works in Berkshire and is a chartered accountant with over ten years of experience working with a wide range of clients to provide full outsourcing and financial reporting. She now specialises in small to medium not-for-profits, having accumulated an in-depth knowledge of charities through her work managing independent examinations.
Since the cull first started back in 2013, Georgie knew this was something she was passionate about and has worked with various groups to sett survey and patrol areas of interest. It's clear the issue is not going away any time soon, so when the opportunity arose to apply for a trustee role, she says she jumped at the chance to put her professional knowledge to good use as well as her boots-on-the-ground experience.
When she's not lost in a good spreadsheet or out looking for badgers, you will either find her tending her extensive house plant collection or three-quarters of the way to the front of a punk gig.
David Oakes
Board member since 2024
David is a prolific stage and screen actor, predominantly recognisable for his roles in television period dramas. He is best known for his roles as Prince Ernest in ITV’s “Victoria", Godwin in Netflix’s "Vikings: Valhalla”, George Plantagenet in the BBC’s "The White Queen" and Juan Borgia in Showtime’s "The Borgias”. David’s many stage credits include playing the title role in “Hamlet” at the Rose Theatre in York, Thomas Novachek in “Venus in Fur” and Christopher Marlowe in “Shakespeare in Love”, both in the West End.
Alongside his acting work, David produces his own award-winning natural history podcast, “Trees A Crowd”. David also serves as an ambassador to The Woodland Trust, The Wildlife Trusts and David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation, and has written for a number of national newspapers.
Susie Phillips
Board member since 2024
Susie has had a passion for wildlife conservation from a young age and has pursued a career in the sector working for Cheshire Wildlife Trust, Save the Rhino and Chester Zoo in a variety of fundraising and public engagement and education roles. She also has a range of ecological survey experience working with BTO, Cheshire Wildlife Trust and the Peoples Trust for Endangered Species.
Following a Bsc in Conservation Biology and Ecology from the University of Exeter and an MRes from the University of Chester, Susie is now undertaking a PhD at the University of Liverpool. Her project uses population genetics to inform management strategies for water vole reintroductions, with a focus on developing reliable non-invasive methods for DNA collection.
When she’s not looking for water voles (or other wildlife on her field sites!), Susie enjoys hiking, paddleboarding and climbing in Cheshire and North Wales.
Susie is excited to bring her broad experience within the conservation sector to Badger Trust and hopes to encourage more young people to become involved in native species conservation and charity governance.
Guda van der Burgt
Board member since 2024
Guda graduated from Utrecht University, the Netherlands, with a degree in Veterinary Medicine. She worked in rural mixed practice on the Gloucestershire-Wiltshire borders for 14 years, followed by 10 years at the VLA/APHA (part of DEFRA). During this time she was project lead on various Bovine TB and welfare projects and started doing expert witness work. The job included badger post-mortem examinations for numerous projects, e.g. RTA’s, vaccination trials and the start of the government culls in 2013. After leaving the civil service Guda spent 2 years in the pharmaceutical industry, before establishing her own veterinary consultancy business.
Guda was born in Holland into a family keen on conservation. She is a partner together with her husband in a farm and tourism enterprise in the Cotswolds. In the last 20 years they have planted 40 acres of woodland and put the rest of the land into various environmental and rewilding schemes. This has certainly benefited plants and wildlife, but no badgers to date!
She hopes that her experience, knowledge of bovine tuberculosis and farming knowledge will help to halt the badger culls and preserve the remaining badger population in the UK for future generations.
Christa van Wessem
Board member since 2023
Christa was born in the Netherlands, where she studied veterinary medicine and worked as a veterinary surgeon for the first seven years of her career. After a stint in Southern Africa, where she trained and worked as a safari guide, Christa moved to South West England in 2009.
In the first years after moving to the UK, Christa worked at an RSPCA Wildlife Centre just as the Badger cull was about to start, and living in the South West meant she had a fair bit of direct and indirect involvement with the results of the badger persecution. The past nine years she was the vet at a large zoo and was fortunate enough to work with a wide variety of amazing animals, and teach veterinary students how to best look after these animals.
Christa is passionate about animal welfare and conservation and has spent several of her holidays volunteering abroad in wildlife rescue centres and training local vets. She loves to travel and being out in nature to look for local wildlife, although she is lucky to have plenty of that in Devon as well, where she lives now.