Operation Tiggywinkle, the astonishing plan to rid Scots isles of EVERY hedgehog trends now
They are among the nation’s favourite animals. But hedgehogs, it seems, are not welcome everywhere.
For conservationists are launching a multimillion-pound plan to eradicate every single one of the creatures from a group of Scottish islands.
Teams of hunters and a huge network of traps are soon set to be deployed in an ambitious bid to capture thousands of hedgehogs on Uist.
The animals are not native to the Hebrides and are considered a threat to the islands’ internationally important birdlife – because they feast on eggs.
Under the plan, up to 100 hedgehogs a week could soon find themselves being trapped while out foraging for food.
Once the creatures have been checked over in a special ‘rehabilitation facility’ on the isles, they will be shipped off to new homes on the Scottish mainland.
The stunning landscape of Uist hosts thousands of hedgehogs, soon to be targeted in rehoming scheme
Hedgehogs are considered a threat to the islands’ internationally important birdlife
Queen guitarist Brian May, helped halt snipers from shooting hedgehogs in an earlier scheme
The plan for what is to become the Uist Native Wildlife Project is due to be formally unveiled later this year.
Yet even as the details are being finalised, the move to eradicate the hedgehogs has raised one particularly prickly issue: it has been tried before.
An earlier, controversial attempt to clear the isles of hedgehogs –which lasted for more than a decade and also cost taxpayers millions of pounds – was abandoned, unfinished, in 2015.
And even though thousands of animals were previously culled or captured, the hedgehogs, who are known as prolific breeders, have since had nine years to multiply and repopulate – leaving some observers wondering whether it was all a waste of time, effort and money.
In the charming children’s stories by Beatrix Potter, Mrs Tiggy- Winkle the hedgehog is a caring washerwoman who helps a little girl with her laundry.
The real-life saga of the Uist hedgehogs has proved far more dramatic.
It features snipers, lethal injections, electric fences, a cash bounty and even some angry celebrities.
And while the creatures themselves have largely been left to their own devices for almost a decade, wildlife groups are now plotting the animals’ total eradication.
The RSPB has confirmed a strategy to clear Uist of hedgehogs ‘in their entirety’, once and for all.
A spokeswoman said an ‘operational plan’ was being produced, detailing ‘proposed methodology and estimated costs’.
She said: ‘RSPB Scotland and NatureScot are in the initial stages of developing the Uist Native Wildlife Project, with the objective of removing non-native hedgehogs in their entirety from the whole of Uist.’
In the early 2000s, an attempt to get rid of the animals by killing them sparked a furious outcry from hedgehog lovers.
Now, instead of culling the creatures, the plan is to track and capture them before moving them to homes elsewhere in Scotland.
An environmental consultancy firm, APEM, based in Stockport, Cheshire, has been tasked with planning the ‘translocation, rehabilitation and release of live-captured hedgehogs from the Uists to the Scottish mainland’.
Uist is the chain of Hebridean islands that includes North Uist, South Uist and Benbecula.
Although hedgehogs are not native to the isles, four of the animals are
