Cath Baker, A Snuffle Through the Secret World of Calderdale’s Badgers

📅 Date: 14 March 2026
📍 Venue: Hebden Bridge Town Hall
🕖 Time: 7.30pm (bar open at 6.30pm)

By day, Cath is a social worker. By night (and most weekends), she follows badgers.

Her obsession began ten years ago with a few small conical holes in her lawn – and has since taken her deep into Calderdale’s woods, fields, and hidden places. As a volunteer with the Calderdale Badger Protection Group, Cath has spent a decade immersed in the secret lives of these elusive, powerful creatures. She is also a committee member of the Halifax Scientific Society, a Trustee of Full of Joy Animal Sanctuary, and a Director of Bridestones Rewilded CIC – but badgers remain her first love.

In this lively, eye-opening talk, Cath invites us into a world most of us never see.

Badgers are celebrated, feared, argued over, protected, and persecuted – often all at once. They are among our most iconic wild neighbours yet remain deeply misunderstood. We share their land, usually without knowing it. What really happens when our worlds collide?

Through stories, observation, and hard-won experience, Cath explores the fact and fiction of ‘our’ badgers – how they live, how they shape our landscape, and why they matter more than we realise.

As Ted Hughes wrote: “The Badger in the spinney is the true king of this land.”

Come and meet Cath and the true kings of Calderdale.