Hedgepigs

[captivebolt]

Interesting letter from today's Times.
"The demise of hedgehogs can be attributed largely to the inexorable spread of Mr Brock, to whom a tasty Tiggy-Winkle is a great treat, often preceded by skylark or grey partridge eggs and an amuse-bouche of bumble-bee nest and grubs.

I make no comment, merely pass on the remark.

Captivebolt

[HedgehogRescue]

So let's see. Badgers are nipping down the shops and stocking up on rat poison, slug pellets, pesticides, a strimmer or two and some fencing with concrete footings?

Badgers can and do kill and eat hedgehogs. We have a problem with this locally right now but I'm willing to bet we lose far more to the above mentioned items.

It remains to be seen how that pans out over the next few years as the badger population increases and follows hogs into suburbia due to lack of food in their usual habitat but for now I would say the author needs to provide proof.

Hmmm having just found the article concerned and the replies that go with it, I suspect most replies are in jest. It ends up talking about 3 wheeled hedgehogs. You are never going to get a sensible discussion about wildlife in the Times.

[Vixen]

how can they blame the badger for the demise in hedgehog numbers. That nature, the badger eats cos there hungry. Where as we humans love to drive big metal odjects around and aim it at wildlife that stand no chance at all.

[paulthomas]

There is a link between high badger numbers and low hedgehog numbers. Whilst badgers do occasionally predate hedgehogs it's more likely that their low numbers is as a result of competition for food, which is just a part of the balance of nature. Hedgehogs are also partial to the eggs of ground-nesting birds (as are rats, foxes, stoats, mink and otters). It's a risk the birds run and, on mainland Britain, they've evolved strategies to cope with the losses.

[2dogs2000]

Well we certainly don't have any badger setts in the middle of town and all the dead hedgehogs I see are the result of being squshed by cars! I am sure more are killed by slug pellets too.

[captivebolt]

I don't go for conspiracy theories but if people start to believe that badgers don't only carry BTB, they kill hedgehogs as well, so much the easier to arrange a badger cull . . .

Cynic? Me?

Captivebolt

[dampflippers]

You forgot farmers spraying fields right up to boundaries, and verge cutters cutting right into the undergrowth, makeovers of gardens - paving over them or just lawns and nothing else.

[Vixen]

Originally Posted by captivebolt

I don't go for conspiracy theories but if people start to believe that badgers don't only carry BTB, they kill hedgehogs as well, so much the easier to arrange a badger cull . . .

Cynic? Me?

Captivebolt

that make 2 of us.

[Moonmoth]

If we had Badgers everywhere that would be Great ! then the Natural Food chain would balance out the Badgers , foxes ,Hedgehogs Frogs and bugs as it is where there are badgers left you often see them squashed by the side of the road repeatedly in the same places as they try to negotiate the roads through their traditional territories .

[Rob_D]

Well I will comment - what demise of the hedgehog?

They are still very common and the numbers are increasing according to the latest survey results from the Mammals on Roads study (2009 data) http://www.ptes.org/files/566_morsy0708feedback.pdf. There are steady increases in the South West, where Badgers are also common.

I'm sure there are local problems with hogs due to habitat loss, pesticides etc, but the situation nationally is not bad. If people are going to claim that Badgers are responsible for reducing Hedgehog numbers, they need to have some evidence, not just vague ideas that Badgers sometimes eat Hogs.

Surveying mammal numbers is very hard. I have a strong feeling that the whole story that Hogs are in a recent serious decline was based on very flimsy evidence. Mainly it seems to have been based on the first 3 years of the mammals on roads survey. That was not enough data to draw any conclusions. It also used the national gamebag census, which clearly had/has a few flaws itself. Furthermore hedgehogs breed very rapidly and I'm sure their numbers fluctuate greatly from year to year. Hopefully all the new hedgehog surveys that have been started in the last few years will gather some reliable data and we can see if there are real problems.