7 ms·

Badgers are driving hedgehogs extinct

54 points by networked 11y ago

hopeless 11y ago
Background: I live in Ireland and hosted 7 hedgehogs in/around our garden last year. 2-3 are probably hibernating within 50m. I tag, track, name & write notes on them each evening. Anecdotally, I've never seen a badger around here though we do have foxes, stoats and, I would expect, badgers. Hedgehogs represent the most accessible of wild animals. They don't mind human presence and you can literally walk outside with a torch and stand next to them. If you want to understand our attachment to hedgehogs, Hugh Warwicks' books, particularly 'A Prickly Affair', describe our relationship with humour, engaging stories and field research: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Prickly-Affair-Charm-Hedgehog/dp/0141034297/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Prickly-Affair-Charm-Hedgehog/dp/014.... Likewise, if you'd like to know more about hedgehog behaviour and research, Pat Morris' book is quite definitive: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hedgehogs-British-Natural-History-Collection/dp/1873580908/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1454945889&sr=1-1&keywords=hedgehog http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hedgehogs-British-Natural-History-Co... Of course badgers will sometimes eat hedgehogs! They both compete for the same food sources (insects, worms, etc), and occupy the same territory (hedgerows, bordering open farmland), and badgers have the means to kill a hedgehog (strong powerful claws). But badgers don't seek out hedgehogs. In areas where food or habitat is scare, they will eat hedgehogs. Why not? You get to take out an ecological competitor AND have a meal! Win-win for the badger. But there's also countless examples of badgers ignoring hedgehogs, or feeding alongside each other both in the wild and urban gardens. So perhaps the question should be: when don't badgers eat hedgehogs? It appears there's no problem when food is plentiful. Perhaps we should be encouraging hedgerow preservation and reducing pesticide use (i.e., the problem) instead of calling for a cull of badgers (the symptom). It would be worth referencing the Peoples Trust for Endangered Species statement on Hedgehogs vs Badgers: https://ptes.org/campaigns/hedgehogs/ https://ptes.org/campaigns/hedgehogs/ Largely, this plight of the hedgehog against the dastardly badger is a means of using a well-loved animal to support a cull of badgers aimed at reducing TB in livestock. "Won't somebody please think of the hedgehogs" is now their rallying cry.
Maken 11y ago
>Unless we are prepared to unleash brown bears, lynx and wolves into the English countryside to control badgers and help hedgehogs, which seems unlikely Wolves and Bears can be dangerous for people living in the countryside, but is there any reason to believe releasing lynx would be a bad idea?
- m0nty 11y ago
  Wolves might be released in Scotland, there are calls for lynx as well: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33017511 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33017511 I can only imagine how livestock farmers will react.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    I've seen first hand the kind of damage a feral cat can do to an adult guy (you would not believe it so no point describing it), I'd hate to walk into a lynx, especially one with young nearby. It's not just the livestock farmers that will react to that one. Lynx are nothing to mess around with if you can avoid them please do.
    - pvaldes 11y ago
      7000 car accidents caused by deer in Scotland each year, killing people and causing damages to scottish economy estimated in 5 million Pound. Lynx would help with this for free, saving the lives of many people each year, including the lives of many livestock farmers and its beloved relatives. Lynx will be glad also to control cattle diseases hidden in wild deers and will drive big money from tourists to this areas. The idea that the government will not try to save lives of scottish people, because a few livestock farmers are grumpy and live in the past is totally ludicrous.
      - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        There are other solutions; its not black-and-white. How about a hunting season on deer?
atemerev 11y ago
How it is even possible to "open" a hedgehog? I thought these guys are nearly invulnerable, unless rolled in the water. (No, I won't be looking up the gory details in Youtube...)
- jballanc 11y ago
  I think you only need to do a image search for "badger claws" to get your answer: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=badger+claws https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=badger+claws
  - gadders 11y ago
    You might want to change to "British Badger Claws" so you don't get Honey Badgers.
- masklinn 11y ago
  > I thought these guys are nearly invulnerable They're not armored, they just have spines to discourage soft fleshy bits from getting too close. They're preyed on by large birds (some owls, golden eagles — >40% of golden eagle preys in Gotland, ~30% in Estonia), juveniles and sick individuals are preyed upon by dogs and foxes. Badgers are strong enough with long enough claws[0] that they can go through the coat, but AFAIK only bother to do so when very hungry. Also cars and trucks, hedgehogs are not car-proof. [0] http://cdn2.arkive.org/media/BD/BD56A45A-197D-4EC4-BC79-D052AAE85AD5/Presentation.Large/Front-paw-of-a-badger.jpg http://cdn2.arkive.org/media/BD/BD56A45A-197D-4EC4-BC79-D052...
m0nty 11y ago
> The one thing the pressure groups hate mentioning is badgers There is a sub-text throughout all of this, which is touched upon but not explicitly stated: culling of badgers in Britain is a highly emotive subject, and it's become one of the touchstone issues for many people, along with (for example) fox-hunting and other so-called blood-sports. (Although the badgers are being culled, rather than hunted for sport.) The UK government seems committed to reducing badger numbers at the urging of the farming industry who despise badgers for their role in spreading bovine tuberculosis. Opponents of the cull maintain it merely disperses badgers, making the TB problem worse. So if badgers are killing hedgehogs (an even more popular animal due to their role in English folklore and fiction) it might change attitudes towards badger culling. Personally, I think he underplays the role of road-kill in their demise, the "flat hedgehog" has become a cultural reference-point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R5tUc1S3cc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R5tUc1S3cc It will be interesting to see if this story goes mainstream and affects the ongoing debate in any way.
- oneandoneis2 11y ago
  Hedgehogs aren't nearly as common road-kill casualties as people tend to think - it's just that their prickles break down really slowly, so we see more of their remains on the road than other animals. Not because so many of them die, just because the evidence hangs around longer.
  - m0nty 11y ago
    Yes, it's a good point - it just looks awful so I suppose it registers. High levels of road-kill also indicate that there is enough of a species to become road-kill on a frequent basis. The wet Spring a few years ago caused a significant decline in some bird species, Barn Owls being among them. Biologists knew this because they were finding fewer road-killed owls. So anyway, that's part of the reason I said he "underplays" the road-kill effect, rather than using it as a way to outright dismiss his arguments.
- anon1385 11y ago
  The badger cull is absolutely the only reason this article was written. Note that Ridley is a member of the UK government, so it's not a coincidence that he would be writing an article to defend the UK government's policies.
pjc50 11y ago
Please don't interpret this as an ad hominem, but advice to find more sources on this issue, as the author is basically as Establishment as it is possible to be in the UK without actually being a member of the Royal family. He's a Viscount, Conservative, member of the House of Lords, with a column in the Times. He is literally a coal baron (Baron Wensleydale). He was chairman of Northern Rock at the time when it was the first bank to collapse in the UK in the recent crisis. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/viscount-matt-ridley-protesters-storm-coalmine-on-prominent-climate-change-sceptics-estate-in-a6709541.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/viscount-matt... What I'm saying is of course he's in favour of shooting badgers. Find some more sources with vetinary backgrounds.
- Symbiote 11y ago
  Since you mention the royal family: Prince Charles wrote to Blair supporting a badger cull [1]. It's despicable how the royal family interfere in politics like this, and I don't understand why the Labour government tolerated it. [1] Page 10 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/prince-of-wales-correspondence-with-the-prime-minister https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/prince-of-wales-c...
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - raesene4 11y ago
    Errr, if the government don't like anyone's opinions, they are entitled to ignore them, but in general I'd say that people are entitled to express their opinions as Prince Charles did. In terms of "tolerated" the only thing that springs to mind that you'd be suggesting is that the labour government should have somehow stopped Prince Charles from writing the letters? but that seems like an odd thing to suggest, so perhaps I'm missing something
    - Ntrails 11y ago
      The question is whether his letters were given more weight than any other letter from the citizenry. My understanding is that whilst my fathers letters were responded to with form letters from aides, the princes were responded to with form letters from aides AND the prime minister was informed that a letter was received. Truly sickening abuse of power.
lucd 11y ago
badger badger badger ... http://www.weebls-stuff.com/badger.html http://www.weebls-stuff.com/badger.html
- NoGravitas 11y ago
  Mushroom, mushroom.
jlebrech 11y ago
We can't keep regulating nature so that it looks like it has done since our history, creatures should go extinct. it's how evolution works.
- Angostura 11y ago
  >Creatures should go extinct. We're currently in the midst of a mass extinction which is largely being driven by humanity. The selection pressure that we are placing on many species for outweigh's natural selection's ability to act on random mutation to promote fitter variants. What you are promoting isn't a course of action that will lead to an alternative, rich ecosystem better suited to current conditions. It would simply lead to an impoverished and more fragile ecosystem, ultimately less capable of supporting humanity, if we want to go down the reductionist utilitarian road. We are custodians of an astonishingly rich and diverse biosphere, which we are already damaging. We have a duty to try and mitigate that damage.
- _yosefk 11y ago
  Not that it's my prediction, but evolution can also work by all humans dying due to the destruction of their environment and then something else evolving of whatever creatures survived. Human extinction is not different from dinosaur extinction; I believe that we'd rather avoid it for selfish reasons, regardless of the fact that it's just one paths of evolution among many. Certainly it being an evolutionary path not unlike others does not make it tempting. "Evolution" is whatever is happening - survival of the survivors. If humans kill a certain number of badgers and the number of hedgehogs rises plus a bunch of other hard to predict things happens, it's "evolution" as much as humans having killed larger predators and done nothing about badgers and whatever happened next. An alien observer might comment that the number of badgers went down due to humans, or instead that the number of hedgehogs went down due to badgers. The only real question is whether you think more harm than good is done by reducing the number of badgers, and it ought to be answered on specific grounds.
- Scarblac 11y ago
  Some creatures also survive, and that's also how evolution works. In fact whatever actually happens is how evolution works... And I don't see why we can't keep regulating nature.
nly 11y ago
When i was a kid it wasn't uncommon to open the backdoor in the morning to find hedgehogs curled up on the doormat. I don't think I've even seen evidence of one since then though. Conventional wisdom in the UK is that their decline is due to decimation of their natural habitat and food sources by us, cars squishing them, slug tablets, people burning piles of leaves (where they sleep) etc etc. Badgers being responsible to any significant degree seems a little far-fetched.
bboreham 11y ago
I thought this was going to be some kind of programming analogy, like pets and cattle.
xivzgrev 11y ago
The updated lesson from good to great: find your hedgehog concept, and hope you don't encounter your kryptonite / badger
rcurry 11y ago
"For example, in southern California where coyotes are absent," I'm sorry, but this guy needs to get his facts straight. Southern California is home to some of the highest density coyote populations in the state.
- nqzero 11y ago
  not disagreeing or trying to undermine your argument, but curious (i'm in northern ohio). traditional coyotes, or the coyote-wolf-dog mix that is ubiquitous in the northeast ?
  - ptha 11y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coywolf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coywolf
  - rcurry 11y ago
    I don't know much about the geographic distribution of hybrids, but I've never seen anything other than the scraggly little western ones around San Diego; they're about 30 lbs soaking wet, nowhere near as big as the ones you see in New Hampshire or around Canada.
enziobodoni 11y ago
But badgers eat primarily stoats and voles...
foreigner 11y ago
Totally anecdotal, but my experience corroborates this. I lived in Hampshire for three years recently and despite lots of searching, never saw a live hedgehog and only two dead ones. In that time I did see probably a dozen badgers and innumerable foxes.

54 points by networked 11y ago

Background: I live in Ireland and hosted 7 hedgehogs in/around our garden last year. 2-3 are probably hibernating within 50m. I tag, track, name & write notes on them each evening. Anecdotally, I've never seen a badger around here though we do have foxes, stoats and, I would expect, badgers. Hedgehogs represent the most accessible of wild animals. They don't mind human presence and you can literally walk outside with a torch and stand next to them. If you want to understand our attachment to hedgehogs, Hugh Warwicks' books, particularly 'A Prickly Affair', describe our relationship with humour, engaging stories and field research: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Prickly-Affair-Charm-Hedgehog/dp/0141034297/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Prickly-Affair-Charm-Hedgehog/dp/014.... Likewise, if you'd like to know more about hedgehog behaviour and research, Pat Morris' book is quite definitive: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hedgehogs-British-Natural-History-Collection/dp/1873580908/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1454945889&sr=1-1&keywords=hedgehog http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hedgehogs-British-Natural-History-Co... Of course badgers will sometimes eat hedgehogs! They both compete for the same food sources (insects, worms, etc), and occupy the same territory (hedgerows, bordering open farmland), and badgers have the means to kill a hedgehog (strong powerful claws). But badgers don't seek out hedgehogs. In areas where food or habitat is scare, they will eat hedgehogs. Why not? You get to take out an ecological competitor AND have a meal! Win-win for the badger. But there's also countless examples of badgers ignoring hedgehogs, or feeding alongside each other both in the wild and urban gardens. So perhaps the question should be: when don't badgers eat hedgehogs? It appears there's no problem when food is plentiful. Perhaps we should be encouraging hedgerow preservation and reducing pesticide use (i.e., the problem) instead of calling for a cull of badgers (the symptom). It would be worth referencing the Peoples Trust for Endangered Species statement on Hedgehogs vs Badgers: https://ptes.org/campaigns/hedgehogs/ https://ptes.org/campaigns/hedgehogs/ Largely, this plight of the hedgehog against the dastardly badger is a means of using a well-loved animal to support a cull of badgers aimed at reducing TB in livestock. "Won't somebody please think of the hedgehogs" is now their rallying cry.

Maken 11y ago

>Unless we are prepared to unleash brown bears, lynx and wolves into the English countryside to control badgers and help hedgehogs, which seems unlikely Wolves and Bears can be dangerous for people living in the countryside, but is there any reason to believe releasing lynx would be a bad idea?

m0nty 11y ago
Wolves might be released in Scotland, there are calls for lynx as well: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33017511 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33017511 I can only imagine how livestock farmers will react.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  I've seen first hand the kind of damage a feral cat can do to an adult guy (you would not believe it so no point describing it), I'd hate to walk into a lynx, especially one with young nearby. It's not just the livestock farmers that will react to that one. Lynx are nothing to mess around with if you can avoid them please do.
  - pvaldes 11y ago
    7000 car accidents caused by deer in Scotland each year, killing people and causing damages to scottish economy estimated in 5 million Pound. Lynx would help with this for free, saving the lives of many people each year, including the lives of many livestock farmers and its beloved relatives. Lynx will be glad also to control cattle diseases hidden in wild deers and will drive big money from tourists to this areas. The idea that the government will not try to save lives of scottish people, because a few livestock farmers are grumpy and live in the past is totally ludicrous.
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      There are other solutions; its not black-and-white. How about a hunting season on deer?

atemerev 11y ago

How it is even possible to "open" a hedgehog? I thought these guys are nearly invulnerable, unless rolled in the water. (No, I won't be looking up the gory details in Youtube...)

jballanc 11y ago
I think you only need to do a image search for "badger claws" to get your answer: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=badger+claws https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=badger+claws
- gadders 11y ago
  You might want to change to "British Badger Claws" so you don't get Honey Badgers.
masklinn 11y ago
> I thought these guys are nearly invulnerable They're not armored, they just have spines to discourage soft fleshy bits from getting too close. They're preyed on by large birds (some owls, golden eagles — >40% of golden eagle preys in Gotland, ~30% in Estonia), juveniles and sick individuals are preyed upon by dogs and foxes. Badgers are strong enough with long enough claws[0] that they can go through the coat, but AFAIK only bother to do so when very hungry. Also cars and trucks, hedgehogs are not car-proof. [0] http://cdn2.arkive.org/media/BD/BD56A45A-197D-4EC4-BC79-D052AAE85AD5/Presentation.Large/Front-paw-of-a-badger.jpg http://cdn2.arkive.org/media/BD/BD56A45A-197D-4EC4-BC79-D052...

m0nty 11y ago

> The one thing the pressure groups hate mentioning is badgers There is a sub-text throughout all of this, which is touched upon but not explicitly stated: culling of badgers in Britain is a highly emotive subject, and it's become one of the touchstone issues for many people, along with (for example) fox-hunting and other so-called blood-sports. (Although the badgers are being culled, rather than hunted for sport.) The UK government seems committed to reducing badger numbers at the urging of the farming industry who despise badgers for their role in spreading bovine tuberculosis. Opponents of the cull maintain it merely disperses badgers, making the TB problem worse. So if badgers are killing hedgehogs (an even more popular animal due to their role in English folklore and fiction) it might change attitudes towards badger culling. Personally, I think he underplays the role of road-kill in their demise, the "flat hedgehog" has become a cultural reference-point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R5tUc1S3cc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R5tUc1S3cc It will be interesting to see if this story goes mainstream and affects the ongoing debate in any way.

oneandoneis2 11y ago
Hedgehogs aren't nearly as common road-kill casualties as people tend to think - it's just that their prickles break down really slowly, so we see more of their remains on the road than other animals. Not because so many of them die, just because the evidence hangs around longer.
- m0nty 11y ago
  Yes, it's a good point - it just looks awful so I suppose it registers. High levels of road-kill also indicate that there is enough of a species to become road-kill on a frequent basis. The wet Spring a few years ago caused a significant decline in some bird species, Barn Owls being among them. Biologists knew this because they were finding fewer road-killed owls. So anyway, that's part of the reason I said he "underplays" the road-kill effect, rather than using it as a way to outright dismiss his arguments.
anon1385 11y ago
The badger cull is absolutely the only reason this article was written. Note that Ridley is a member of the UK government, so it's not a coincidence that he would be writing an article to defend the UK government's policies.

pjc50 11y ago

Please don't interpret this as an ad hominem, but advice to find more sources on this issue, as the author is basically as Establishment as it is possible to be in the UK without actually being a member of the Royal family. He's a Viscount, Conservative, member of the House of Lords, with a column in the Times. He is literally a coal baron (Baron Wensleydale). He was chairman of Northern Rock at the time when it was the first bank to collapse in the UK in the recent crisis. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/viscount-matt-ridley-protesters-storm-coalmine-on-prominent-climate-change-sceptics-estate-in-a6709541.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/viscount-matt... What I'm saying is of course he's in favour of shooting badgers. Find some more sources with vetinary backgrounds.

Symbiote 11y ago
Since you mention the royal family: Prince Charles wrote to Blair supporting a badger cull [1]. It's despicable how the royal family interfere in politics like this, and I don't understand why the Labour government tolerated it. [1] Page 10 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/prince-of-wales-correspondence-with-the-prime-minister https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/prince-of-wales-c...
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- raesene4 11y ago
  Errr, if the government don't like anyone's opinions, they are entitled to ignore them, but in general I'd say that people are entitled to express their opinions as Prince Charles did. In terms of "tolerated" the only thing that springs to mind that you'd be suggesting is that the labour government should have somehow stopped Prince Charles from writing the letters? but that seems like an odd thing to suggest, so perhaps I'm missing something
  - Ntrails 11y ago
    The question is whether his letters were given more weight than any other letter from the citizenry. My understanding is that whilst my fathers letters were responded to with form letters from aides, the princes were responded to with form letters from aides AND the prime minister was informed that a letter was received. Truly sickening abuse of power.

lucd 11y ago

badger badger badger ... http://www.weebls-stuff.com/badger.html http://www.weebls-stuff.com/badger.html

NoGravitas 11y ago
Mushroom, mushroom.

jlebrech 11y ago

We can't keep regulating nature so that it looks like it has done since our history, creatures should go extinct. it's how evolution works.

Angostura 11y ago
>Creatures should go extinct. We're currently in the midst of a mass extinction which is largely being driven by humanity. The selection pressure that we are placing on many species for outweigh's natural selection's ability to act on random mutation to promote fitter variants. What you are promoting isn't a course of action that will lead to an alternative, rich ecosystem better suited to current conditions. It would simply lead to an impoverished and more fragile ecosystem, ultimately less capable of supporting humanity, if we want to go down the reductionist utilitarian road. We are custodians of an astonishingly rich and diverse biosphere, which we are already damaging. We have a duty to try and mitigate that damage.
_yosefk 11y ago
Not that it's my prediction, but evolution can also work by all humans dying due to the destruction of their environment and then something else evolving of whatever creatures survived. Human extinction is not different from dinosaur extinction; I believe that we'd rather avoid it for selfish reasons, regardless of the fact that it's just one paths of evolution among many. Certainly it being an evolutionary path not unlike others does not make it tempting. "Evolution" is whatever is happening - survival of the survivors. If humans kill a certain number of badgers and the number of hedgehogs rises plus a bunch of other hard to predict things happens, it's "evolution" as much as humans having killed larger predators and done nothing about badgers and whatever happened next. An alien observer might comment that the number of badgers went down due to humans, or instead that the number of hedgehogs went down due to badgers. The only real question is whether you think more harm than good is done by reducing the number of badgers, and it ought to be answered on specific grounds.
Scarblac 11y ago
Some creatures also survive, and that's also how evolution works. In fact whatever actually happens is how evolution works... And I don't see why we can't keep regulating nature.

nly 11y ago

When i was a kid it wasn't uncommon to open the backdoor in the morning to find hedgehogs curled up on the doormat. I don't think I've even seen evidence of one since then though. Conventional wisdom in the UK is that their decline is due to decimation of their natural habitat and food sources by us, cars squishing them, slug tablets, people burning piles of leaves (where they sleep) etc etc. Badgers being responsible to any significant degree seems a little far-fetched.

bboreham 11y ago

I thought this was going to be some kind of programming analogy, like pets and cattle.

xivzgrev 11y ago

The updated lesson from good to great: find your hedgehog concept, and hope you don't encounter your kryptonite / badger

rcurry 11y ago

"For example, in southern California where coyotes are absent," I'm sorry, but this guy needs to get his facts straight. Southern California is home to some of the highest density coyote populations in the state.

nqzero 11y ago
not disagreeing or trying to undermine your argument, but curious (i'm in northern ohio). traditional coyotes, or the coyote-wolf-dog mix that is ubiquitous in the northeast ?
- ptha 11y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coywolf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coywolf
- rcurry 11y ago
  I don't know much about the geographic distribution of hybrids, but I've never seen anything other than the scraggly little western ones around San Diego; they're about 30 lbs soaking wet, nowhere near as big as the ones you see in New Hampshire or around Canada.

enziobodoni 11y ago

But badgers eat primarily stoats and voles...

foreigner 11y ago

Totally anecdotal, but my experience corroborates this. I lived in Hampshire for three years recently and despite lots of searching, never saw a live hedgehog and only two dead ones. In that time I did see probably a dozen badgers and innumerable foxes.