Interaction with Humans

Hedgehogs seem to hold a special place in the hearts of many people. Children across the globe have been brought up with endearing stories by the late London-born author Beatrix Potter; one such book, published in 1905, told The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-winkle, a lovable ‘washer woman’ who provided a laundry service for her neighbours. Since then, the hedgehog has developed a strong public acceptance and adoration, being rated among Britain’s most loved garden animals in a recent survey (see above) and, until recently, featuring in the logo of The Mammal Society.

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Photo: One-week-old hedgehog)

Hedgehogs may currently enjoy a well-deserved popularity here in the UK, but their species has not always been viewed with such affection. Les Stocker writes of how hedgehogs were extensively hunted in the past, featuring alongside wolf, elk, beaver and boar in the table scraps of Mesolithic (about 10,000 years ago) British hunters. In 1532, Henry VIII (King of England) passed the Preservation of Grain Act (one of the series of Tudor Vermin Acts), which listed a number of ‘noxious birds and vermin’, the killing of which was rewarded with a bounty. The bill offered 12p per fox or badger killed, 1p per Red kite (a bird of prey) and, according to former RSPB director Roger Lovegrove in an article to The Guardian newspaper in January of 2007, half-a-million bounties were paid out for hedgehog heads in the late 17th Century and early 18th Century. In 1566, Queen Elizabeth I strengthened Henry’s original bill. According to the Journal of the House of Commons 1566, the first reading of this act occurred along with three other “bills of no great moment” on Thursday 28th November 1566. The bill had its second reading on the morning of Friday 20th December (same year) and was passed upon its third reading later the same day. For a well-researched and authoritative (if, on occasion, rather depressing) discussion of wildlife persecution in the UK, the reader is directed to Roger Lovegrove’s Silent Fields: The Long Decline of a Nation's Wildlife (Oxford University Press).

Unfortunately, despite the removal of hedgehogs from the ‘vermin list’, as a whole we humans still cause some considerable problems for them – Lenni Sykes and Jane Durrant note, in their The Natural Hedgehog, that 80% of hedgehog admissions to the Welsh Wildlife Hospital in Llanddeiniol between 1986 and 1994 were due to manmade hazards (18% were natural causes and 2% unknown). Perhaps the most obvious sign of the impact humans can have on the hog population can be seen on our roads. Hedgehogs killed as a result of collision with motor vehicles are now a common sight on the roads and reports of hedgehogs visiting gardens (or, for that matter, reports of hedgehogs at all) are becoming rarer. The possible anthropogenic reasons for the observed decline in hedgehog populations are discussed elsewhere on this site (see Q/A), but suffice to say cars are not the only human-related problem this species faces. Garden strimmers and lawn mowers kill many hedgehogs each year (although numbers can only be guessed at), while the removal of hedgerows and tidying of gardens reduces suitable habitat for them. Similarly, the widespread use of pesticides has probably lead either to a decline in their insect prey, or to the toxification of their main food sources (esp. slugs), although studies are sorely lacking.