uist wader project

[nightshade]

due to their predation of birds eggs ,Hedgehogs were being hunted with dogs then shot,surely like the cormarant they should be allowed to get on with it!
mind you that some areas of britain are a little short on the blighters and they could be redistributed

[wildone]

No Nightshade. The Hedgehogs were introduced by MAN onto the islands unlike the cormorants who found their own way inland. Totally different reason for culling.

[henrya]

And small islands like Uist are particularly vulnerable to introduced predators.

Also, if areas of the mainland have few Hedgehogs, there may be a reason. Transporting Hedgehogs in without understanding those reasons may be condemning the 'hogs to a slow death by starvation.

henrya

[John]

Nightshade is spot on. The Hogs are introduced and are devastating the populations of any ground nesting birds.

There are times on these small islands where man sometimes has to make the decision to cull to balance out nature. By virtue of islands being small the top predator might not have a predator itself so the balance goes astray. One such island in question was Puffin Island near Anglesey which became totally overun with Rats to the detrement of the sea bird colonies there. A decision was made to eradicate the island of these rats and now thankfully the sea bird population is on the increase.