A Prickly Affair

First of the year

Hugh Warwick 4 Comments

It took until the night of the 20th April to see a hedgehog this year … partly due to me not being out wandering around, but partly, also, due to hedgehogs taking a little longer to emerge from hibernation this year.

I had been giving a lecture to the Devon Mammal Group in Exeter – a great crowd filled with interesting questions (and also eager to buy books, I like that a lot) – and went to stay with my old friend Kelvin Boot. I met him when he was the presenter of the Natural History Programme and I was but a menial researcher … back in 1993. He is a great naturalist and is full of stories about the wildlife in his patch of Devon as well as the wider world. Just now he is involved with ocean acidification – ‘the other CO2 problem’.

Not sure whether hedgehogs will be affected by this for a while, but their namesakes, sea urchins, will be affected. As CO2 levels in the atmosphere increase, so the amount absorbed by the sea also increases. This creates an increase in the acidity of the water – which makes it harder for organisms that require calcium carbonate (ie all the ones with shells and bones … which is a lot of them) to gather it from the water. An extreme version of this is to drop something rich in calcium carbonate into vinegar … it will dissolve. Now, the sea is not going to turn to vinegar, but the changes will affect all marine life – and in turn, all life on the planet.

There are hard-nosed scientists out there who fear that this is a more serious problem than global warming/climate change. And some of them fear that it is already too late to change the course we have set.

Kelvin helped a school make this movie about the problem:

The Other CO2 Problem

now that is homework I would like to have received.

And while out with Kelvin yesterday, we got to see Little Egrets and hear their courtship noises – a little like a dunk man trying to impersonate a turkey … not the sort of think one would expect from an elegant white bird. The RSPB have more info and a sound clip here.

Just to add to the great day, on the way back from the estuary where we had been watching the egrets, a stoat dashed across the road.

Now I need a hedgehog to visit my garden, it is only fair really!

saving species

Hugh Warwick 8 Comments

My first, and last, real job was with Natural History Radio in Bristol, part of the elite BBC unit that produces the ultimate in blue-chip wildlife films. It was a fascinating insight into that amazing world, it turned me on to radio and also made me realise that I am not really cut out for a real job (and have been freelance ever since).

So it was really exciting to be back in the studio this morning to do a live insert into the new 40 week series, Saving Species. What a turn around – for the first time ever, a programme of this scale has been commissioned with the express focus of looking at conservation. And I got my chance on the second episode – which, just in case you missed it (!) is available to listen again here …. It can also be downloaded here …. My bit crops up about 7.30 minutes into the programme if you are impatient.

I just loved the look on presenter Bret Westwood’s face as I advocated people taking sledgehammers to fences, decking and patios in the quest for a hedgehog-friendly garden!

I would love feedback – I really enjoyed doing the show and hope to do more. I also recorded a longer interview that will be placed on an Open University website soon – that I will share as soon as I can.

who would a hedgehog vote for?

Hugh Warwick 3 Comments

If ever there was evidence needed for the importance of hedgehogs, then it has come with the launch of the Labour Party election manifesto. We now have broken out of the niche – hedgehogs are mainstream …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCO-KwYpH0M&feature=player_embedded

It is only a matter of time that ‘Support the hedgehog’ becomes ‘Save the hedgehog, save the world’ … and at that point I will know I have been well and truly thieved.

Should it bother me? Well, it is easy to see why the Labour spin doctors have chosen the hedgehog – they see it as the most charismatic and benign of the country’s fauna – everyone loves a hedgehog.

But who would a hedgehog vote for?

Even though I have a recollection of the Monster Raving Loony Party calling for the lowering of the buttons on traffic lights, to enable hedgehogs to press them and facilitate their crossing … I am not sure there is quite enough coherence in the overall environmental and wildlife strategies to seduce most right-thinking hogs.

Tories? Well, there is a streak of green running through that party – the old-school conservatives were and are frequently into many of the things that hedgehogs like – countryside, hedges etc – even if the motivations are rather suspect, driven more often than not by a desire to kill something for fun. But – arch-Tory Ann Widdecombe is a very keen hedgehog supporter. She insisted that on her 60th birthday her friends did not give her presents, but donate money to the BHPS. I met her and chatted about this – she is, despite some rather less-pleasant views, a delightfully intelligent and slightly intimidating woman with more than a toe slipping over the line between animal welfare and animal rights. Another surprising Tory supporter was that ‘semi-house-trained polecat’ (thanks Michael Foot for that) Norman Tebbit.

Though I wonder whether the Tory love of nature may in part be motivated by a general misanthropism.

Liberal Democrats should be pretty green, mainly with envy at the other two main parties hoarding the votes, but their local track-record is not as pleasant as it should be given the generally benign nature of their presentation. I will need to read a little more about them to see if they really do have anything to offer the hedgehog.

Labour? Well, the closest they have come to supporting hedgehog-rights is in their video! Though under their leadership the hedgehog has been upgraded to a priority species on the Biodiversity Action Plan (even if this means nothing unless I and my colleagues get on and do something about it).

But none of the three main parties seems to have grasped the bigger picture – that will appeal most to hedgehogs (and wildlife around the country). It is impossible to have a sustainable environment – one in which wildlife is able to flourish and is not at risk of being wiped out by development and climate change – without addressing the central tenet of capitalism. Growth – growth cannot go on forever – it is a biological imperative – growth has to stop at some point. In our body, when there is growth that does not follow basic biological laws, we have CANCER. Society that is driven to consume more and more – and industry that collapses without continual growth – is all completely doomed to failure.

The big problem for us is that politicians do not give a damn – they are going to be in power for a brief moment – and they want to hold onto as much power as they can in that time. They are not giving a thought to what is going to happen to their children’s children. Politics is so obscenely focussed on the short term interests of the greedy and so depressingly ignorant (or uncaring) of the long term impacts of their actions that it is hard to find a voice to turn to …

And that leaves the Greens. Can they? Will they earn their first seat in the House of Commons? In Brighton there is one of the most honest and hard-working people I have ever met – Caroline Lucas. And she is in with a real chance. We are not going to get a Green government any time soon – but I think it is to the Greens we must look if we want to find a party that is truly on the side of the hedgehogs (oh, and the rest of us too!)

countryfile and empathy

Hugh Warwick 3 Comments

It was great to see, but over in a flash … here is the link to the i-player for Countryfile. I appeared just after the hedgehog at 11.00 minutes in:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00s2wh0#synopsis

And if that was not enough, the wonderful Roman Krznaric has published an interview with me on his blog – Outrospection.

Here is our conversation – but I really recommend a rootle through the work of this fascinating man:

Roman Krznaric: You’ve written a whole book about hedgehogs, and were described in a recent review as having an ‘endearingly batty’ obsession with them. Why do you personally care about these creatures so much?

Hugh Warwick: I started studying the ecology of hedgehogs nearly 25 years ago. To begin with I was just fascinated by how little we knew about this charismatic animal. But the more time I spent with hedgehogs, the more I came to realise that they have a wonderful quality. They endear themselves to people, they are attractive, quirky and eccentric. But my epiphany came on a night out with Nigel – when I ended up nose-to-nose with this hedgehog I was radio-tracking. As he looked up at me and our eyes met I became aware that there is no other wild creature we can do this with. I had a glimpse of his essential wildness, while at the same time he was obviously looking at me. He went back to eating, I was left feeling slightly altered. So at the heart of the whimsically titled book I have written (A Prickly Affair: The Charm of the Hedgehog) is something a little deeper about our connection with the natural world.

RK: There is a lot of debate in empathy circles about whether it is possible for human beings to empathise with animals. The suggestion is that we are so different from bats, dolphins, elephants and most other animals that we are incapable of understanding their feelings and thoughts, and stepping empathetically into their skins. Their experiences are, ultimately, alien to us. As someone who has become intimate with hedgehogs and spoken to hedgehog aficionados worldwide, do you think it is possible for us to empathise with animals in general, and hedgehogs in particular? Can we really step into their spiny skins?

HW: I completely agree that it is impossible to know exactly what it feels like to be a hedgehog, we do not have the vocabulary. But that does not prevent a degree of empathy – and what I ask people to do is to change their perspective. Literally. Get down at hedgehog level, get nose-to-nose with a hedgehog and then look at their world from this position. This will give you an insight into the complications we have thrown in the path of hedgehogs.

But on the whole, and despite the contradiction with my night out with Nigel, I am not that keen on the idea of empathising with a hedgehog – but with hedgehogs. I believe there is a risk of getting mired in sentimentality if you focus your attentions on an individual. But there is freedom to be had when allowing this to spread to the species as a whole – and then on to the ecosystem that supports it. The individual hedgehog is a gatekeeper of a deeper love of the natural world. The risk I believe is in getting stuck in the gate. Don’t stop, keep moving.

RK: You refer to the evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson’s idea of biophilia, which he describes as ‘the innately emotional affiliation of human beings to other living organisms’. It has always struck me that empathy and biophilia are very closely related. What do you think?

HW: I am not sure whether we are empathising with nature – it would be as if we were empathising with the air we breath and the water we drink. It is more than empathy – it is a deeply seated physical need. There is plenty of evidence that shows we humans suffer when removed from contact with nature.

But certainly the idea is closely related – and I use our empathetic relationship with the hedgehog as a way of altering our perspective on the world around.

As an aside, I wanted to call my book The Hedgehog’s Dilemma (it has that title in the US). It refers to the Schopenhauer idea – two hedgehogs / people want to be close to each other, but if they get too close, they get hurt, yet if they are too far apart, they become bereft. And I believe we have that relationship with the planet – we cannot all go and do a Thoreau and live in the woods, we would destroy it. But if we are totally removed from it, we get sick.

RK: Even if we are able to empathise with hedgehogs and other animals, does it really matter? How can it help us nurture our bonds with the natural world, especially in a way that inspires us to take action to preserve it?

After what I have just said this seems a little prosaic. By sharing a hedgehog’s perspective we can see what problems it faces. Whether it is the cars on the roads that not only threaten extinction, but also fragment the environment, preventing movement – to the litter that collars and kills hedgehogs to the gardens given over to car-ports, decking and patios and the borders cleaned of life with agro-toxins – we get to see those anthropogenic threats all the more clearly.

But for me the most important thing is the contact of the eyes – looking at a hedgehog looking at me – eyes meeting and there being this almost intangible spark of wildness. We cannot get that connection with wildness easily. Maybe hiking up a mountain or along a forest trail, there may be that sense of wildness. But here, in my own back garden, I have a doorway into the wild, one that many people can share without corrupting what we so need to survive. Which is a long way round of saying, gaze at a hedgehog and let yourself fall in love with nature. Once you have fallen in love you are all the more likely to change yourself to enable the relationship to continue. So, go love a hedgehog and help save the world. Or as I put it in the book – ‘Save the hedgehog, Save the world’ (thanks to Heroes for that one).

hedgehog feet

Hugh Warwick 6 Comments

A friend has just sent me this picture he took last year of hedgehog feet – and Brian Goddard has kindly let me put it up on the blog as it is a lovely image and a view that we don’t often get.

Brian is a great photographer and I heartily recommend a visit to his website to have a look at the images he has found from around the world.

I did a talk last night in Oxford for the Oxford Urban Wildlife Group, at Science Oxford, and it was sold out! I think everyone had a good time – just remember, I am available for very reasonable fees to come and talk pretty much anywhere.

There are still so many hedgehog stories – I can’t keep up. But because it is silly, I will share the successfully dieted hedgehog story …. though it would have been nice if the BBC had got Colin Seddon’s name right. Fourteen hedgehogs had been fattened up so much over winter that when it came to release time, they were too fat to roll up tightly into a ball!

Hedgehogs in the news – again

Hugh Warwick 3 Comments

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:

my turn and the indy

Hugh Warwick 4 Comments

thanks to Peter Smith of the Wildwood Trust for taking this picture of me … I think the hedgehog looks great!

and as if that were not enough excitement … today the Independent is carrying a piece that looks as if I wrote it … but that would have required them to give me money, so instead I spent far longer being interviewed and correcting drafts than I would ever have spent writing! Here it is: Hedgehogs, heroes of the garden.

Now to try and get some work done!

Craven image

Hugh Warwick 3 Comments

For those of a certain age, there is one man who was there as our conduit to adult news – John Craven and his Newsround introduced me to war (Vietnam) in the early 1970s. And now? He presents Countryfile on BBC1 – Sunday at 1720. And on the 11th April – he has managed to secure one of the journalistic scoops of his career – better than John Simpson bringing the realities of napalmed villages to school children, perhaps – me and a hedgehog!

In what might be a record for time travelled to actual interview – it took me 9 hours to get to and from the Wildwood Trust near Herne Bay, Kent. And the interview, just the one take (of course) took 2 minutes! But we did get to have lunch together, after I had made him pose for this image:

That was a fantastic hedgehog to be interviewed with – he was calm and just inquisitive enough to make it interesting.

The paperback is due out on Thursday … but I am still wallowing in the glow of being referred to as endearingly batty in the national press!

Endearing Battiness

Hugh Warwick 4 Comments

I have just had  call from my agent, Patrick Walsh, who had picked up a copy of the Guardian on his way back from the airport (he has just spent two weeks cuddling baby elephants with Daphne Sheldrick in Kenya) … and he was so excited. It is the possibly the best review my book has ever received … even if it does describe me as having an ‘endearing battiness’.

He picks up on the fact that this could be first and only book ever published to be endorsed by both Ann Widdecombe and Jeanette Winterson … oh, just read it and imagine how warm my cockles are feeling!

You can read it online at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/mar/27/prickly-affair-charm-hedgehog-warwick

Or, because I care for the state of your fingers, here:

Oh, come on, I thought. A whole book about hedgehogs? All right then, bring it on. After all, it is one of the purposes of this column to introduce not only you, but its author, to unfamiliar or unlikely subjects. And, speaking personally, I have very little opinion about hedgehogs, except for the usual idées reçues about how Gypsies are said to bake them in clay, how on earth they mate (very carefully, ho ho), and don’t they all have fleas?

Well, after reading this book, not only am I significantly better informed about the little spiny creatures, I feel considerably better disposed towards them. I am now hedgehog-conscious.

I am also much more aware of certain pockets of life in this country. One of the charms of this book is the endearing battiness of its author – but in contrast to the benign loopiness of some of the people he interviews, he is a calm and sober commentator.

You wouldn’t think so at first, though. The picture we initially get of Hugh Warwick is that of a wet, smelly and somewhat obsessive naturalist up at all hours of the night, wringing the rain out of his beard and chasing carefully after hedgehogs with tracking devices on their backs. These are luminous, so that a courting pair appear as “an amazing dance of two sprites, one circling the other, with periodic leaps and sneezes like waltzing glow-worms with hay-fever”. (Although female hedgehogs spend a lot of time fending off the attentions of ardent males – I make no comment – there is still quite a bit of noisy hedgehog sex in here, including an anecdote from Bremen, where police officers called to investigate some strange noises found “two hedgehogs described unusually eloquently by the police spokesman as being ‘loudly engaged in ensuring the continuity of their species’.”)

Hedgehogs are eccentric themselves, so it should come as no surprise that they attract the devotion of the oddball. There will be few other books, if any, which are endorsed, as this one is, by both Ann Widdecombe and Jeanette Winterson. (Which is not to say that either of them is odd, but . . . well, you know what I mean.) In fact, you could fill up the New Statesman’s “This England” column for a year with material from this book. Meet Barbara Roberts, chatelaine of Withington Hedgehog Care, who tries out all the drugs she uses on her charges herself first (“Well, Metacam tastes really quite nice, but they hate one of the antibiotics and I can see why”); or Elaine Drewrey, mother of the lead singer of the band Swing Out Sister, who has the messiest house Warwick has ever seen. “Anyway, no hedgehog has ever complained about the state of the house and that is what matters to me.”

Americans, of course, have to do things bigger than everyone else, so when Warwick goes to the International Hedgehog Olympic Games, prepare yourself for a parade of lunacy beyond the imagination of any satirist. Never mind Zug Standing Bear, who, after an eye-opening time examining American atrocities in Vietnam, used to be one of Gerald Ford’s bodyguards and now has a champion hog called Buttercup – he’s a regular guy. Check out Dawn Wrobel, who communicates telepathically with her hedgehogs and asserts that the creatures call themselves “star children”. (As Warwick says helplessly at this point: “I would hate it if people thought I was not an open-minded sort, I really like to think I am, but . . .”) And just wait till you get to the business about the Rainbow Bridge. Credulity, even with the intermediary of sceptical paraphrase, can only be stretched so far.

So what is not to love about this book? It is funny, generous, kind, learned (a lot of ancient hedgehog lore), thoughtful, ecologically minded and – this is quite important, actually – unsentimental. (The way badgers eat hedgehogs is somewhat unsettling, but then that’s the natural world for you.) I would never have imagined that a book on this subject would have me reading lots of bits of it out to anyone who would listen. But that’s what happened here. It achieves its purpose: and in its charm lies its success.

A Prickly Affair: The Charm of the Hedgehog by Hugh Warwick 304pp, Penguin, £9.99

Hedgehog Beijing

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When I met Atom, the petite drummer from the Beijing punk band Hedgehog, I was immediately impressed by the sheer power in her four foot something frame. She might have appeared doll-like at first glance but as soon as you saw the determination in her eyes you realised she was someone with whom you should not trifle.

As we ate gorgeous food in a Beijing restaurant, Atom said something that caused everyone else to burst into fits of laughter. I prodded Poppy, my superb guide and interpreter, and asked what was going on. I should point out that just before the laughter I was feeling rather pleased with myself. I had managed to reach across the table and pick up a spicy green bean with my chopsticks. And the reason for the laughter? Atom had just said, “he uses his chopsticks just like a baby!”

The photograph appeared beside an interview with Matthew Niederhauser on CNNGO website.

Have a listen to the noisy bunch … click here.

My time in China – spent looking for the wonderfully named Hugh’s Hedgehog (there is chapter of my book dedicated to this, so don’t think you are going to get too much of the story here!) – smashed many of my prejudices I had about the country. I thought I would struggle, yet I loved it. The vegetarian food was some of the best food I have ever eaten, and there was one night in a Yunnan style restaurant that I had a series of dishes that left me tingling from spice and pleasure. I might add the list later – it was wonderful.

And another prejudice that was broken – not all animals are treated as snacks – and hedgehogs are, at least around Beijing, one of a small few sacred animals. They are revered. How about that – at two of the extremes of their range – UK and China – the hedgehog is a much more significant animal than we at first think. Is hedgehog-love a universal thing?

pip pip