Killing Machines: Humble British Hedgehog Causes Havoc in New Zealand
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:
Killing machines: humble British hedgehog causes havoc in New Zealand:
New Zealand is a hedgehog paradise. Whereas in Europe they are hunted by pine martens, foxes and badgers, New Zealand's hedgehogs have few predators. Unchecked by the food chain, they meander blissfully through forests and gardens, hoovering up an astonishing number of native creatures.
With the exception of a few local bats, New Zealand has no native land-based mammals. Its bird population adapted to this state of affairs - some, like the Kiwi, are flightless, or nest on the ground. When stoats, cats, possums and rats were introduced, they wreaked havoc: crunching down rare insects, killing fresh-hatched chicks, and slurping the eggs of ground-nesting birds.
Hedgehogs are also key culprits. "It's increasingly coming to light how much damage they can do," says Nick Foster, a PhD candidate at the University of Otago who is researching hedgehogs. A single, dedicated hedgehog will consume numerous native lizards, bird eggs, and wt - a kind of large flightless cricket found only in New Zealand. One study found 283 wt legs in a single hedgehog stomach.
[...] The mission to try to drive hedgehogs from protected habitats is seen as critical in New Zealand. The country is running an ambitious campaign to eradicate introduced predators by 2050, using a mixture of trapping, hunting, and poison. Foster works on Te Manahuna Aoraki, a conservation project that hopes to render 310,000 hectares predator-free, taking advantage of surrounding mountains and natural barriers to create a kind of "island" inland. New Zealand succeeded at eradicating predators on some offshore islands - but doing so on the mainland is much harder.
[...] Today, there aren't clear estimates of just how large hedgehog populations have grown, but there are more in New Zealand than in Britain.
[...] Eradicating hedgehogs from an area is actually a more ethical proposition than constant population control, Foster says, which requires killing each generation over again.
"You do it once and you do it right, is the best outcome we can hope for," he says. "If you remove all the hedgehogs from an area, the killing stops."
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