Bird numbers plunge despite £1m hedgehog exodus

Published on Saturday 18 October 2008 19:41

A £1m project to remove hedgehogs from the Hebrides has been hit by two prickly problems.

Since 2003 more than 950,000 of public cash has been spent on trapping the spiky predators and removing them from North Uist and Benbecula to prevent them from eating the eggs of native birds.

But a report has revealed numbers of protected waders such as oystercatchers, dunlins and ringed plovers have actually declined despite the huge operation. And conservationists, who have overseen the rehousing of more than 1,000 hedgehogs, are threatening to withdraw from the scheme.

The mammals were introduced to the Western Isles in the 1970s and their thriving numbers were seen as the major threat to colonies of rare seabirds.

Animal activists were outraged when Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) began a hedgehog cull in 2003, but last year they agreed to halt the killings and hand over the animals to the Uist Hedgehog Rescue (UHR) coalition which relocates the creatures on the mainland.

But a new SNH report into the Uist wader programme reveals little progress has been made.

It reveals oystercatcher numbers have decreased by 5% on North Uist, where the hedgehog population has largely been removed, and increased by 20% on South Uist and 9% on Tiree, where populations of the animals remain.

Similarly, breeding numbers of dunlins and ringed plovers have declined by around 6% on both North and South Uist.

The report also recommended a number of possible future options for the project, including stepping up the hedgehog removal or halting it completely.

UHR has expressed grave concern about the possibility of "year-round operations".

Spokesman Ross Minett said: "At the moment the operation stops for a few months during the summer because there are a number of animals who are pregnant or who have dependent young.

"If they started catching all year round it would lead to litters of dependent babies starving to death and we would have no other option but to pull out of the whole project."

A spokesman for SNH stressed that no decisions have yet been made with regards to the future of the project.