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Reasons for Hedgehog Cull
Alice Lambert. Mull, SNH main board member.
Oban Times, Letters
9 January 2003
Sir,
The decision by Scottish Natural Heritage to cull
hedgehogs on Uist was a hard one to make.
To many people the Cull seems callous, albeit
there is an understanding that the important Uist waders populations
must be protected from further harm.
The SNH board did not vote for relocation/translocation
because scientific studies have shown that introducing translocated
hedgehogs to an existing population leads to some of the existing
animals and some of the translocated hedgehogs dying.
This is because the numbers of hedgehogs in any
population is governed by the amount there is to eat, the places
there are to live and the predation, eg cars or badgers.
If the translocated hedgehogs were introduced
to a ‘greenfield site for hedgehogs’, assuming it was
a good place to live, they would thrive. But this is what happened
to South Uist in the first place and we have learned to be much
more cautious about alien introductions.
The SNH board has no objection to hedgehog charities
carrying our a further study into the effects of translocation but
this cannot be seen as a solution to the now pressing need to remove
the hedgehog threat from the waders in the Uists as soon as possible.
Alice Lambert. Mull, SNH main board member.
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