A “perfect storm” of intensive farming and rising badger populations has left most of the countryside in England and Wales devoid of hedgehogs, according to the first systematic national survey. Badgers eat hedgehogs and also compete for the beetles and worms the prickly animals consume. It concludes: “The combined effects of increasing badger abundance and intensive agriculture may have provided a perfect storm for hedgehogs in rural Britain, leading to worryingly low levels of occupancy over large [areas].”The scientists found no rural hedgehogs at all in the south-west of England. “Badgers and hedgehogs can, and do, coexist, as was the case historically for thousands of years,” said Williams. Pesticide use, which can kill the invertebrates that hedgehogs and badgers feed on, has been declining since 1990, the NFU says.

Source: The Guardian September 06, 2018 13:01 UTC