Railway maintenance company ProRail has found evidence of badger activity in 500 places near tracks up and down the country over the past two years and is calling for shorter procedures to remove them.

The company is currently investigating 50 places with signs of badger activity, such as droppings, digging and sand mounds, to see if any action is needed to make sure railway services are unaffected.

Badgers de-stabilised tracks in Friesland and Noord-Brabant in 2023 and their removal disrupted services for several days.

ProRail now monitors the situation on behalf of the infrastructure ministry to prevent weeks of disruption.

“We found setts in 40 locations around the tracks in 2023 and hundreds of indications of their presence,” south region chief Dimitri Kruik told broadcaster NOS. “These are two different things, but they do show that the number of setts has multiplied.”

The Netherlands is home to an estimated 7,000 badgers and that number has remained stable, according to ecologist Bert Hesse. “By monitoring the badgers near the tracks ProRail has a good idea of where things might get dangerous and minimise unpleasant surprises for train traffic in time,” he said.

But according to ProRail, the procedures to remove the setts of the protected animals are proving too time-consuming.

“If the sett has not been established we can intervene quickly but if the sett has been established we need an exemption to remove the animals and meanwhile the badgers keep digging,” Kruik said. It now takes months to request the exemption which ProRail would like to see brought back to weeks.

Removing the setts is expensive, Kruik said. A 2-kilometre stretch of track in Limburg where three setts have been found cannot be used for 40 days while the work is taking place. The cost of removal will be some €6.5 million on top of €2.5 million for earlier work on the same stretch in 2023.

Preventative measures, such as trying to get the animals to move to an artificial sett and are not always successful. In Esch in Noord-Brabant badgers have now started to dig a sett a few hundred metres from their old home.