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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: March 2007

Scottish Natural Heritage halts Hebrides hedgehog cull—agrees to relocate instead

 

INVERNESS--The Scottish Natural Heritage board of directors on February 20 "approved a trial translocation of hedgehogs from the Western Isles to the mainland," the government-backed trust announced.

"The move followed consideration of new advice received from the Scottish SPCA that a trial translocation should be conducted rather than a cull," Scottish Natural Heritage admitted--without admitting that this is exactly what the Uist Hedgehog Rescue coalition recommended all along.

The coalition includes Advocates for Animals, the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, Hessilhead Wildlife Rescue Trust, and International Animal Rescue.

The Scottish SPCA dropped support for killing hedgehogs to protect birds after "new research by the British Hedgehog Preservation Society found that island hedgehogs survive if relocated," summarized Independent Scotland correspondent Paul Kelbie. "The study, by ecologist Hugh Warwick, published in the scientific journal Lutra, showed that 80% of the hedgehogs relocated to the mainland survived when deaths unrelated to relocation were discounted.

Another study, published in 2006 by Stephen Harris of Bristol University, also said hedgehogs could be relocated successfully."

Thus ended four years of persecution of the alleged most deadly hedgehogs since Deinogalerix, the two-foot-long "terrible hedgehog" who terrorized the middle Mocene epoch, 15 million years ago.
Gardeners seeking a natural method of slug control in 1974 imported diminutive native British hedgehogs to North Uist, South Uist, and Benbecula islands in the Outer Hebrides off Scotland's west coast. By 2002, Scottish Natural Heritage and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds alleged that more than 5,000 descendants of the original few pair were nest-raiding the islands' native wading birds into extinction.

Starting in 2003, Scottish Natural Heritage managed to kill 690 hedgehogs. Racing the killers to find hedgehogs, Uist Hedgehog Rescue volunteers relocated 756.

"The Uist hedgehog fiasco was just the latest lunacy from Scottish Natural Heritage," said Animal Concern campaigns consultant John Robins, of Dumbarton, Scotland. They have also been promoting deer stalking and shooting of dwindling grouse numbers, while failing in their duty to monitor the issuing of government licenses to cull certain species of birds." Robins asked Scottish First Minister Jack McConnell "to instigate an independent investigation into the management of SNH and their use of public funds."

Instead, wrote Guardian Scotland correspondent Severin Carrel, "The Scottish Executive is expected to confirm soon that it will be a criminal offence, punishable by up to two years in prison or an unlimited fine, for anyone to release one of nine species on to a Scottish island: badger, hedgehog, red fox, pine marten, common rat, red squirrel, stoat, weasel and wild cat.

"The National Trust for Scotland has just spent £500,000 eradicating more than 10,000 rats which had colonised Canna," Carrel continued. "No rats have been seen since last year, and there were 273 successful razorbill nestings in 2006, compared with 27 in 2005.

"Scottish Natural Heritage and the National Trust are considering culls of mink and rats on Rum, Iona, Mull and the Ardnamurchan peninsula," Carrel added. Feral mink, escaped or released from fur farms before mink farming was banned at the end of 2002, are blamed for "a complete collapse in tern breeding," Carrel wrote.

While attempting to purge hedgehogs, Scottish Natural Heritage spent £1.65 million to kill 230 mink in the Uists and Benbecula, reported Jeremy Watson of The Scotsman.

Counselors from the islands have now asked Scottish Natural Heritage to gas rabbits, whom they blame for causing severe erosion of the machair, or sand pastures, along the Atlantic coast of the Outer Hebrides. The pastures have traditionally been grazed heavily by crofters' sheep. Considering rabbits a nuisance and rival for the sparse grass, crofters have historically killed them by any means available.