Hedgehogs in the news – again

I am quite amazed – the number of hedgehog stories that the press can tolerate is remarkable. Just today I have a piece on the Ecologist website and in the Western Morning News. To top it all, I have been booked to appear on Saving Species – BBC Radio 4’s new natural history  programme on Tuesday 13th April … live on Radio 4 .. do they know what they have let themselves in for? The producer was telling me that I would have 5 minutes and that there will be questions leading me along … Questions?? They would be interruptions!

My John Craven excitement is being broadcast on Sunday at 1815 on BBC1 – evening making it onto the blog.

Will there be more? Hope so – though now I am preparing for the talk in Oxford on Thursday … oh, and working.

Easter held no hedgehog excitement – but I still had fun. Pip got to meet a new born lamb:

and Mati got to walk with my gorgeous fairy-odd daughter:

3 thoughts on “Hedgehogs in the news – again

  1. These issues will go on and on and on endlessly so long as environmentalists believe they know what’s best. As pointed out in the article, ‘conservation’ is entirely subjective, not only from an immediate perspective e.g. do we think hedgehogs should be culled or protected in a given location, but over time. An action which seems like a ‘good idea’ today will probably turn out later to have been not so clever. Further on it may look like a good idea again, and so on ad infinitum. The real problem lies with the central tenets of environmentalism, which assume a) that we know what’s best and b) that we can anticipate the future. For goodness sake stop trying to control everything, won’t you ever learn the futility of it?!!

    • Hi Sandra – I think you miss a point here – pretty much everything that is being done in the name of hedgehog conservation is being done to mitigate, often unintended, anthropogenic impacts. I would argue that environmentalism is not about claiming to know what is best for the planet, but about trying to find out what is least harmful for the planet. If you are a firm believer in the status quo, then you will be happy to preside over a calamitous time. I would rather rail against the destruction than sit by and watch it happen.
      h

      • Thank you hedgehoghugh! However I think you have missed my point also! In order to decide which particular point in time you are attempting to ‘roll back’ to you must make a subjective choice. That subjectivity will be based upon a judgement formed in the ‘here and now’. For example, although we believe ‘now’ that the ‘anthropological impact’ of introducing hedgehogs where none were previously (at least as far as we know)has had what we currently consider ‘undesirable’ effects, we cannot know what the future effects of culling them all might be! You seem to imagine there was some magical point in time, before man mucked it all up, in which all was harmonious, and that somehow we can ‘manage’ things in order to return there!

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