What on Earth is going on?

Over the past few weeks I've noticed large patches of the grass at the Abbeymead Open Spaces park area being ripped up. It's not wild boar, they are 20 miles away in the Forest of Dean, and they cause a lot more damage than scraping up the grass, they really dig in.
The only thing I can think of is Badgers getting desperate for food and digging up worms and slugs.
It pretty destructive, to the grass, but you can't begrudge them as they are only trying to survive.
I notice they don't touch the playing fields though, maybe they see the white lines around the football pitches as some sort of barrier HAHAHAHAHAHAHA