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Appeal to Save Hedgehogs
BBC News Online
24 January 2003
The Scottish Parliament has agreed to hear an
appeal from supporters of 5,000 hedgehogs threatened with extermination.
The board of Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) sanctioned
the slaughter in an effort to help preserve rare birds on the Uist
isles.
They are due to be killed by lethal injection
in a few weeks time.
Members of the British Hedgehog Preservation Society
will appear before the parliament's petitions committee in Edinburgh
on Tuesday.
Supporters have mounted a determined campaign
to save them.
The campaigners hope the appeal to the Scottish
Parliament will buy them time.
Representatives have requested the petitions committee
give them a chance to collect and move the hedgehogs to new homes
on the mainland before extermination begins.
The seven member committee will hear their petition
before taking evidence from SNH.
The conservation body decided the hedgehogs would
have to be destroyed because they were eating the eggs of rare waders.
A handful of hedgehogs were first introduced to
the Uists in 1974 to help control slugs and snails in islanders'
gardens.
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