Hands off city hedgehogs
The Department of Conservation is waging a war against hedgehogs. And with some justification as hedgehogs eat the eggs and chicks of ground-nesting birds, rare lizards and a lot of native invertebrates. A DOC worker once found 283 weta legs in the stomach of one hedgehog, and I once found a hedgehog with four rare giant native centipedes in its guts.
DOC worries that hedgehogs in the bush rob ground-feeding native birds of their insect food.
DOC and other agencies go to great lengths to kill hedgehogs. Since 2005, DOC has killed more than 7000 hedgehogs up Otago’s braided riverbeds where black stilts, black-fronted terns and wrybills nest.
The Animal Health Board killed thousands of hedgehogs in Otago and South Canterbury.
To protect nesting kiwis, more than 800 hedgehogs were killed in Trounson Kauri forest and, to protect dotterels nesting in Northland sand dunes, 400 hedgehogs were killed there.
These days, many of the nesting areas are protected by new kinds of traps and wire-net hedgehogproof fences. Ninty-five hectares of Otago have been fenced off to protect the endangered Cromwell chafer beetle.
Hedgehogs are quite numerous in the bush up north, largely because those areas are almost frost-free. The milder winters allow hedgehogs to hibernate for a very brief time, if at all, so they can breed almost the year round.
Cold wet winters limit their numbers in the bush further south. Tens of thousands of possum, rat, and cat traps in the Rimutaka Range bush caught only 17 hedgehogs between 1967 and 1986.
Conservationists will be pleased to learn that hedgehog numbers have nosedived dramatically over most of the North Island since they peaked in the 1950s. Not so in the east coast of the South Island where plenty are still squashed along State Highway 1.
Anti-hedgehoggers think the only good hedgehog in New Zealand is a dead one. Indeed, they have already extinguished them in several bush sanctuaries and from Quail, Rangitoto and Motutapu Islands.
But, I hear you cry, what about hedgehogs round town? Must we hammer them too?
It seems to me that hedgehogs do a good job in keeping down snails and slugs in city gardens and they help to control grass grubs and porina moths on open farmland.
Hedgehogs may threaten smalllocalised populations of native birds and other animals in remote corners of New Zealand but these rare or endangered species don’t . live in town. The situation does not justify a nationwide fatwa against hedgehogs.
Apart from DOC and fingerwaving ecopurists who want to kill these ‘‘deadly predators’’, most New Zealanders have a soft spot for these cute, endearing, creatures and would be sad to see the last of Tiggywinkle.
There exists, in fact, a national organisation devoted to saving hedgehogs. Hedgehog Rescue New Zealand promotes the welfare of ‘‘our wonderful friends and garden helpers’’, and saves as many sick, orphaned, or damaged animals as possible.
Many vets go to some trouble in rehabilitating sick or damaged city hedgehogs.
Good luck to them.