News

14 December 2003

Press statement on Uist hedgehogs

Advocates for Animals has written to the Board of Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) urging it to reject proposals to kill yet more healthy hedgehogs on the islands of Uists and Benbecula in 2004. The Board will meet on Tuesday 16th December to discuss the issue.

During 2003 SNH caught and killed 66 hedgehogs on the islands at a cost of well over £100,000 of taxpayer’s money. The consortium of animal protection, rehabilitation and rescue organisations working together as Uist Hedgehog Rescue (UHR) successfully relocated 156 hedgehogs. Each year at least 5,000 hedgehogs are released into the wild by experienced and respected wildlife organisations, including the RSPCA and the SSPCA.

In a letter to SNH’s Board, Advocates for Animals’ Director, Les Ward, wrote: Advocates for Animals and other members of UHR have already agreed with SNH and other members of the Uist Wader Project (UWP) that action needs to be taken to protect the populations of ground-nesting wader birds on the Islands. That is not in dispute. However, this aim can be secured through non-lethal action and not through the unnecessary killing of yet more perfectly healthy hedgehogs.

We welcome the proposal put forward to engage in a "scientific trial translocation" of the hedgehogs from the Islands. We urge the Board of SNH to support this proposal and to reject the killing policy that would run in parallel with the trial.

We are confident that if this trial is approved and conducted, it will confirm the practice already undertaken by the many organisations involved in the rehabilitation and release of thousands of hedgehogs each year, namely that it is possible and animal-welfare friendly to safely relocate hedgehogs in appropriate numbers to suitable, pre-selected release sites.

Not only is such action a non-lethal humane solution, it is also much cheaper in relation to financial costs as far as the tax-payer’s money is concerned. All the evidence continues to show that the vast majority of members of the public in the UK are totally opposed to the killing of hedgehogs, fail to understand the logic behind the killing policy of SNH and UWP and do not want to see public money spent on killing hedgehogs. Furthermore, they want to see an immediate humane non-lethal solution to the bird versus hedgehog question."

Notes to Editors
The letter sent to SNH encloses with it a report from Hugh Warwick, an independent researcher and writer on environmental and ecological matters. The report, Uist Hedgehogs, discusses many of the points put forward by the UWP as the basis for killing hedgehogs on the islands. The report can be viewed at: www.advocatesforanimals.org/UistHedgehogsReport. Hugh Warwick can be contacted on 07815 042452.

For further information please contact Advocates for Animals on 0131 225 6039 (Out of hours 07971 590337).

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