Friday, 19 July, 2002

Whilst applauding Britain's success in protecting its wild birds, John Sheard suggests more should be done to save our mammals and fish

IT WAS a busy time in the countryside this week and I had a wide range of issues to chose from when approaching this column: should I write about the Chancellor's broken promises on rural spending (see News, Tuesday), the CLA's campaign to force BT to provide more broadband Internet services (see News, Thursday) or the fate of the Uist hedgehogs?
 

Uist Hedgehog population soars

The Uist hedgehogs? What in Heaven's name have they to do with country life, particularly country life in the Yorkshire Dales?
 
Well, more than you would think, actually. And it's mid-summer and I thought the fate of prickles in the Outer Hebrides would be much more seasonal that political machinations which, anyway, will go on for months (if not forever).
 
You may or may not know that the hedgehog population on this Western isle has now reached such epic proportions that they are eating the eggs of a lot of ground nesting birds. So the bird lovers want the hedgehogs killed.
 
This has outraged the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, which has launched a fund to have the animals rounded up and repatriated to the mainland. *
 
Now this may have a tinge of that wonderful Whisky Galore comedy about it, but there is also a serious point: can we sometimes go too far in protecting the rights of one species of animal to the detriment of another?
 
For a start, the sea birds that nest on South Uist are a pretty lucky bunch anyway because, only a few generations ago, their eggs were regularly harvested for food in their thousands by the local humans, who scratched a bare living from rough farming and even rougher fishing.
 
If this practice were still common, should the bird lovers have the humans killed?
 
Now I have been a lifelong supporter of both the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds - one of Britain's richest charities - and of the British Trust for Ornithology, one of our best research bodies.
 
But I sometimes wish I could shoot the magpies that raid the nests of songbirds in the hedges round my vegetable patch and also the cormorants that have now spread inland to gorge on the trout and salmon parr in the river I fish. For salmon, in particular, are one of the most threatened species in Britain.
 

Magpie - should be shot?

I also welcome hedgehogs into the garden, because they thrive on slugs and snails, but I would also greet with open arms an increasingly rare predator which one rarely hears lamented: the stoat.
 
Reason: rabbits have become a plague, rather than a pest, in my part of the world for the simple reason that we humans don't eat them any more. They now not only take most of my crops but also cause serious landscape erosion.
 
A family of stoats could have B&B on my plot any time - but who has ever heard of the British Stoat Protection Society. I'd have a couple of foxes, too, but they have all moved into the towns because it is easier to raid a dustbin than catch a rabbit.
 
It seems to me that we are allowing sentiment to decide which species need to be protected and which can be killed off willy nilly. No one cares very much about our wild mammals and, ironically, the only people who spend a lot of time protecting fish are the people who want to catch them (and, in my case, kill and eat them).
 
Perhaps that's a good thing. If fish lovers had become as powerful as bird lovers, they might have had me put down a long time ago. However, there might be those amongst you who t think that might be no great loss … like the hedgehogs of South Uist!