STAFF and volunteers at Secret World Wildlife Rescue are mourning the loss of their two resident badgers who have sadly died.

Pauline Kidner, founder of Secret World Wildlife Rescue, said the centre’s resident badgers, Betsy and Lunar, died within days of each other after falling ill over the festive period.

The wildlife centre is well known for its work with badgers and it will now have no resident badgers on site for the first time in 30 years.

Betsy was the first to fall ill. She was found having had a stroke and was taken to the vets where she was assessed.

The vet, Dom, said he was happy for her to come home and to see how she progressed and staff were hopeful that she would make a full recovery.

But later on in the day the 12-year-old badger had another stroke.

Dom told carers at Secret World there was no chance Betsy would survive and she was put to sleep.

Less than a week later Pauline said staff were ‘horrified’ when they discovered six-year-old Lunar dead in the sett.

Lunar was one of the badgers from the centre which appeared in a BBC series presented by Chris Packham called The Burrowers.

Pauline said: “To lose both badgers so close together was so unusual that a post mortem was carried out on her.

“The findings were that there was no evidence on ongoing disease/illness.

“There was no evidence of anything toxic.

“Both badgers worked so hard in their life-time making people aware of how important badgers are to the ecosystem.

“People had the chance to see that badgers are not the maligned creatures that so many believe they are. Betsy and Lunar will both be very much missed.”