Badger...Badger...Badger...Snaaaaaaaake
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=5905606§ion=newsBadgers threaten Stonehenge burial sites
Mon 9 August, 2004 02:24
By Matthew Jones
STONEHENGE (Reuters) - Determined digging by badgers living near Stonehenge's 5,000-year old circle of megaliths is damaging ancient archaeological artefacts and human remains.
The shy nocturnal animals are burrowing into pre-historic burial mounds on Salisbury Plain.
Their excavations have already disturbed some of the thousands of human remains and rare artefacts buried a few feet beneath the surface of the Plain on which Stonehenge -- a world heritage site -- sits.
The danger posed by the badgers' homebuilding has become so serious that the Ministry of Defence (MoD), which owns much of the land in the area, is trying to coax them away to less historically sensitive places.
"We have already moved badgers from two monuments located just north of Stonehenge," Ian Barnes, one of four archaeologists employed by the Ministry of Defence told Reuters.
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