Hedgehog lover’s talk crashed

Are hedgehogs spiky bundles of joy, or deadly predators destroying New Zealand’s environment?

Debate has erupted following a library talk on work to rescue ailing hedgehogs and successfully release them back into the wild.

Lesley Wheatley of Hedgehog Rescue New Zealand hosted the talk at Orewa Library in Auckland to teach adults and children about hedgehogs, and give a shout out for volunteers to help foster animals while they recuperate.

Wheatley, who has rescued hedgehogs for around four years, also talked about how hedgehogs get a bad rap about being disease and flea-ridden.

Before the talk started, Forest & Bird’s Pauline Smith crashed it to inform people about the darker side of hedgehogs.

Hedgehogs preyed on native snails, skinks, ground nesting birds and their eggs, Smith said.

Smith started the Pest Free Whangaparaoa Peninsula project in 2011, where volunteers trap pests to help native birds and plants flourish.

The release of hedgehogs into the wild undermined and made a mockery of the work of volunteers, she said. ‘‘It is a total insult to everybody’s hours that they put in,’’ she said.

Wheatley supports the work of Forest & Bird, but also believes every creature deserves a chance to live. Hedgehogs are released in suburbia away from areas where they could affect native birds, Wheatley said.

In places where the New Zealand dotterel and variable oystercatchers nest, she will remove hedgehogs if she sees them.

Wheatley said the type of fleas that live on hedgehogs didn’t arrive in New Zealand with them, and diseases and mange mites they can carry could also be caught from pets or cattle.

She also wanted to dispel the myth that all hedgehogs seen during the day were sick, as in late spring females are out working to create nests.

‘‘They’re out there busy gathering bits of hay, grass and moss, whatever they can find, and it might be under your deck, shed, or whatever, but they don’t need rescuing.

‘‘They’re just about to have babies – so please don’t bring them into care,’’ Wheatley said.

Wheatley has had a soft spot for hedgehogs since someone brought her a sick one and asked her to look after it five years ago.

It was covered in mange mites which bit her, and meant a day off work to go to the doctors. That day she visited her mother who died suddenly four days later. The two had deep and meaningful conversations, which meant she got closure on a number of topics before her mother died, Wheatley said.

‘‘I kind of owe the hedgehogs a bit, because without that I wouldn’t have had time with my mother.’’

DOC kills hedgehogs on its land, but releasing them doesn’t breach the Biosecurity Act, as they are not classed as an unwanted organism.

Hedgehogs are also exempt from the Government’s Predator Free 2050 target, which will target possums, stoats and rats.