SCOTLAND:After facing death by lethal injection, Mrs Tiggy-Winkle has been reprieved. A controversial project which has killed hundreds of hedgehogs preying on rare birds in the Scottish Hebrides has been abandoned after new evidence showed they could be safely taken off the islands alive.
The conservation agency Scottish Natural Heritage voted unanimously yesterday to set up a new trial to capture and relocate the hedgehogs on the mainland, suspending a four-year-long culling programme on the Uists in the Outer Hebrides.
The agency said it accepted a recent study by Bristol University which found that relocation could be safer, kinder and cheaper.
The U-turn, which was welcomed by a 1.80m high human hedgehog called Hamish outside the agency's headquarters in Inverness, could bring an end to one of the most controversial culling schemes undertaken by British conservationists.
The agency began killing the hedgehogs by lethal injection in 2003, after it emerged that the tiny predator was decimating populations of endangered ground-nesting waders.
They insisted it was the least cruel and most effective method of culling available, claiming that relocation could traumatise the mammals with no guarantee they would survive. However animal welfare groups, and celebrities like Sir Paul McCartney, Sting and Brian May denounced the proposals as barbaric.
Hedgehogs are not native to the Hebrides. They were introduced in 1974 by gardeners to attack slugs. Some escaped, and began slowly colonising North Uist, South Uist and Benbecula. There are now well over 5,000 hedgehogs on the islands, SNH estimates. - (Guardian service)