Handle with Care



Hedgehog (photo Wikipedia)

I have just become a Hedgehog Champion.  Those are words I did not expect to be writing when I got up this morning.  I was moved to look in to the plight of British hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus) after listening to a report on the radio over breakfast which talked about a long term decline in numbers.  According to the People’s Trust for Endangered Species a population which stood at around 60 million in the 1950s is now thought to be as low as 1.5 million.

The thing that moved me to action, albeit the sedentary kind at which I excel, was the assertion that the reasons for the decline were unknown. They even claimed it might be because of predation by badgers!  Badgers are the hedgehog’s only real predator it’s true, but the two species have rubbed along together (carefully I imagine) for millennia.  Why is it we always try to blame anyone or anything but ourselves?  In every extinction that we know about in the past 2000 years, man has been implicated as the primary cause.

It seems obvious that increases in road traffic over the past half century have played a huge part in the population collapse.  These small animals are very vulnerable to fast moving vehicles, and rolling in to a ball offers no defence. But it also seems obvious that the adoption of intensive agricultural techniques: insecticides, ploughing up hedgerows and the like must play a part too.  Sustainable farming cannot include the eradication of major species no matter how inadvertent it may be.

The truth is that we just don’t know what the causes of the decline might be, but the situation is even worse than the radio reported. The figure of 1.5 million dates from a survey carried out in 1995.  Some estimates claim that numbers may have fallen by as much as 25% even since then. It seems that on top of everything else a series of mild winters recently have been harmful for many hibernating species.  They interrupt hibernation and increase winter energy consumption.

Now a three year study to be run jointly by the PTES and the British Hedgehog Preservation Society will aim to see how farmland habitats could be better managed for hedgehogs, looking at how hedgehogs use hedgerows and field margins in different agricultural settings.  The public are also asked to help by recording sightings and help put together a true picture of the number and distribution of hedgehogs throughout the length and breadth of Britain, and that is why I have become a Hedgehog Champion.  Maybe it’s because I was brought up on Beatrix Potter, and Mrs Tiggywinkle was a childhood friend, but I can’t imagine Britain without hedgehogs.  After all what other species has its own Preservation Society?