Badgers are driving hedgehogs extinct | Hacker News Reader

Badgers are driving hedgehogs extinct

rationaloptimist.com

54 pointsnetworked61 comments

> The one thing the pressure groups hate mentioning is badgers

There is a sub-text throughout all of this, which is touched upon but not explicitly stated: culling of badgers in Britain is a highly emotive subject, and it's become one of the touchstone issues for many people, along with (for example) fox-hunting and other so-called blood-sports. (Although the badgers are being culled, rather than hunted for sport.) The UK government seems committed to reducing badger numbers at the urging of the farming industry who despise badgers for their role in spreading bovine tuberculosis. Opponents of the cull maintain it merely disperses badgers, making the TB problem worse.

So if badgers are killing hedgehogs (an even more popular animal due to their role in English folklore and fiction) it might change attitudes towards badger culling. Personally, I think he underplays the role of road-kill in their demise, the "flat hedgehog" has become a cultural reference-point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R5tUc1S3cc

It will be interesting to see if this story goes mainstream and affects the ongoing debate in any way.

Hedgehogs aren't nearly as common road-kill casualties as people tend to think - it's just that their prickles break down really slowly, so we see more of their remains on the road than other animals. Not because so many of them die, just because the evidence hangs around longer.

Yes, it's a good point - it just looks awful so I suppose it registers. High levels of road-kill also indicate that there is enough of a species to become road-kill on a frequent basis. The wet Spring a few years ago caused a significant decline in some bird species, Barn Owls being among them. Biologists knew this because they were finding fewer road-killed owls. So anyway, that's part of the reason I said he "underplays" the road-kill effect, rather than using it as a way to outright dismiss his arguments.

The badger cull is absolutely the only reason this article was written.

Note that Ridley is a member of the UK government, so it's not a coincidence that he would be writing an article to defend the UK government's policies.

Please don't interpret this as an ad hominem, but advice to find more sources on this issue, as the author is basically as Establishment as it is possible to be in the UK without actually being a member of the Royal family.

He's a Viscount, Conservative, member of the House of Lords, with a column in the Times. He is literally a coal baron (Baron Wensleydale). He was chairman of Northern Rock at the time when it was the first bank to collapse in the UK in the recent crisis.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/viscount-matt...

What I'm saying is of course he's in favour of shooting badgers. Find some more sources with vetinary backgrounds.

Since you mention the royal family: Prince Charles wrote to Blair supporting a badger cull [1].

It's despicable how the royal family interfere in politics like this, and I don't understand why the Labour government tolerated it.

[1] Page 10 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/prince-of-wales-c...

Errr, if the government don't like anyone's opinions, they are entitled to ignore them, but in general I'd say that people are entitled to express their opinions as Prince Charles did.

In terms of "tolerated" the only thing that springs to mind that you'd be suggesting is that the labour government should have somehow stopped Prince Charles from writing the letters? but that seems like an odd thing to suggest, so perhaps I'm missing something

The question is whether his letters were given more weight than any other letter from the citizenry. My understanding is that whilst my fathers letters were responded to with form letters from aides, the princes were responded to with form letters from aides AND the prime minister was informed that a letter was received.

Truly sickening abuse of power.

Surely the decision about what response to make lay with the government (the receiver of the letter) and not Prince Charles (the sender of the letter)?

i.e. They had the choice not to respond or to have a aide respond, but the prime minister chose to respond.

Would you suggest that someone in the monarchy shouldn't express an opinion for fear that the receiver of the letter will pay too much attention to it?

> Would you suggest that someone in the monarchy shouldn't express an opinion

Yes. That's absolutely the point.

Even strong monarchists promote this point [1], but conservative newspapers have (relatively recently) questioned the reality [2].

Until we can vote for the head of state, their opinions on all matters must not influence the government in any way.

[1] http://royalcentral.co.uk/blogs/insight/the-queen-is-the-per...

[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/queen-elizabeth-II/11...

From your own links, the monarch has a rights to encourage and warn. How would a monarch go about encouraging or warning about a course of action without forming, and then expressing, an opinion on that matter?

My understanding is the monarch must not become actively involved in government... thus declining to vote, staying out of European Parliament, etc. That's not quite the same thing as never expressing an opinion.

My understanding is that most people would suggest that that only applies to the head of state (currently queen Elizabeth)

But Prince Charles isn't the head of state... So assuming that you're suggesting that this principle doesn't just apply to the head of state, where do you cut the line? Should everyone in the royal family be barred from expressing their opinion privately or publicly?

How is penning a letter to the PM "interfering in politics"? It sounds like Prince Charles is just doing as any other citizen may do when they hold an opinion about government policy.

Whether or not Prince Charles is due any greater degree of consideration is a whole different question. But, it's not like this is a new development, or one that is unique to the aristocracy. Wealthy businessmen of all backgrounds write to various members of parliament all the time.

He's not "any other citizen". He's the future king, a position which is supposed to be impartial.

But the royal family owns a vast amount of land. If they have a badger problem on that land and they would like the government to do something about, how do you think they should do it?

Give the land to the government?

It doesn't seem to me as if they got it through legitimate ways to begin with. Royalty never struck me as fair play.

Now that's a knee jerk solution, not an actual one that would work in the real world.

It would work just fine in the real world. It's just that no entity that ever came by such wealth through whatever means would give it up because it was the right thing to do.

The state owns a vast amount of land, which for historical reasons is used by the sovereign. (Duchies or Cornwall and Lancaster.)

If the Forestry Commission (managing forest land owned by the state) has a problem they write to the government, but their writing is public and they are accountable, ultimately, to the electorate. The royal family should follow the same process, or else return the land to be managed by DEFRA.

Being impartial does not require a lack of opinion. The monarch retains the right to advise the government and express her opinions. Current practice is a weekly meeting with the PM. Once her opinions have been expressed, she must then follow the advice of her government.

I assume this right to express an opinion extends to Prince Charles and the other royals.

If you wrote a letter supporting the opposite side how big are the chances that your letter would be given equal weight as his given that you are both just 'any other citizen'?

Probably not. But how is that any different than any other democracy? The rich and powerful have more sway over government. In this respect, Prince Charles is no different than Soros or the Koch brothers. Is it fair? Nope. But damned if I can dream up a system that works better.

So it seems to me that he's not doing that as 'any other citizen' and given that he's not entirely dumb he must realize this will carry some weight. In other words, he's simply trying to influence the political process to his advantage and is using his position as attached to his name in order to do so.

Yes. I don't believe I ever claimed otherwise. I only claimed that this is hardly an interference. It's a normal part of democracy as we know it in the western world.

> How is penning a letter to the PM "interfering in politics"? It sounds like Prince Charles is just doing as any other citizen may do when they hold an opinion about government policy.

Yet he's a brilliant author of pop-sci books on evolution and as a "rational optimist" who believes in leaving systems to self-organize, this inconsistent call for "regulation" of the badger-hedgehog "market" hints at cognitive dissonance.

Like, ok usually markets and ecosystems should be left alone to do their thing, unless if it involves hunting, in which case, we want to go hunting and here's an excuse why.

Why can't the upper-class just be honest that they love hunting, it's a tradition of theirs, nobody agrees with them, there's absolutely no reason for it other than sport, why bother trying to justify it ?

The system is self-regulating. The hedgehogs are self-regulating out of existence. If you don't like that outcome, something needs to be done about it.

If you're comfortable with that, then there's no problem here, sure.

"there's absolutely no reason for it other than sport, "

You mean, other than the reason given in the article?

I will say he's at least objectively correct in one part of his article; yes, other parts of the world do this sort of thing all the time. Huge swathes of the United States must have deer hunting season, and even if one finds hunting personally distasteful, the environmentalists generally don't complain too much about it. Every few years the deer hunters don't get assigned enough permits, or the deer hunters don't take them all, and we all get to live through a reminder of what happens when there are too many deer. Deer have the difference that when you hit them with the car, you may die, which is not a problem badgers have.

But, yes, it is absolutely true that it is well-understood in much of the rest of the world that if you want to live without the apex predators in your food chain that you have to take the responsibility yourself, or the ecosystem will happily "self-regulate" into an unpleasant direction. This is only hypocrisy for radical anarchists; even for libertarians who generally approve of government in monitoring roles, this is just another monitoring role.

eh, hedgehogs won't go extinct for want of human intervention

As he notes in the article, if we want it to self-regulate, we need to reintroduce brown bears, lynxes and wolves.

Given that we've already eliminated them, but are still part of the ecosystem ourselves, "self-regulation" of the ecosystem is a pretty hollow phrase.

> Find some more sources with vetinary backgrounds.

What like the sources he links to in the article?

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-1795.2010....

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/naturestudie...

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347296...

http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.2981/wlb.00072

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/26678664_Predator_i...

This is purely ad hominen, he's posh, therefore we can ignore his arguments.

Personally I ignore any arguments I see from Matt Ridley because my own experience tells me that he's a serial liar and distorter of facts. I don't have the time in my life to sort though the bullshit in every Ridley article by reading all the "sources" he quotes to see how he has misrepresented them. Just glancing at the abstracts suggests several of those articles at least have been misrepresented by Ridley, but I'd have to pay to read them to find out.

It's no coincidence that a bunch of HN's resident climate change deniers are suddenly popping up in the comments to this submission to defend Ridley.

I'd also question this criticism as dismissing him solely because of his social status. Which is even worse

I don't understand how this isn't ad hominem

that's the definition of an ad hominem attack

"For example, in southern California where coyotes are absent,"

I'm sorry, but this guy needs to get his facts straight. Southern California is home to some of the highest density coyote populations in the state.

not disagreeing or trying to undermine your argument, but curious (i'm in northern ohio). traditional coyotes, or the coyote-wolf-dog mix that is ubiquitous in the northeast ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coywolf

I don't know much about the geographic distribution of hybrids, but I've never seen anything other than the scraggly little western ones around San Diego; they're about 30 lbs soaking wet, nowhere near as big as the ones you see in New Hampshire or around Canada.

>Unless we are prepared to unleash brown bears, lynx and wolves into the English countryside to control badgers and help hedgehogs, which seems unlikely

Wolves and Bears can be dangerous for people living in the countryside, but is there any reason to believe releasing lynx would be a bad idea?

Wolves might be released in Scotland, there are calls for lynx as well: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33017511

I can only imagine how livestock farmers will react.

I've seen first hand the kind of damage a feral cat can do to an adult guy (you would not believe it so no point describing it), I'd hate to walk into a lynx, especially one with young nearby. It's not just the livestock farmers that will react to that one. Lynx are nothing to mess around with if you can avoid them please do.

7000 car accidents caused by deer in Scotland each year, killing people and causing damages to scottish economy estimated in 5 million Pound. Lynx would help with this for free, saving the lives of many people each year, including the lives of many livestock farmers and its beloved relatives. Lynx will be glad also to control cattle diseases hidden in wild deers and will drive big money from tourists to this areas.

The idea that the government will not try to save lives of scottish people, because a few livestock farmers are grumpy and live in the past is totally ludicrous.

There are other solutions; its not black-and-white. How about a hunting season on deer?

This is the solution that they had tried repeatedly in the past. It obviously didn't worked. They have more deer species than ever, introduced by hunters, including chinese and asian deer species. And is not a perfect solution, because a few people are killed also each year by mistake in the hunting season, of course. More hunters mean a bigger probability of fatal mistakes.

Is totally a black and white problem. There is a clearly obvious cure, but is blocked forever by the hurted feelings of a few people that is at the same time strongly subsidized by the entire population. Maybe its time to try something different.

Hm. Works just fine around here. They have a doe season, which is far more effective than culling the males, as the next generation is limited by the number of does. They do counts, issue tags, and control the population to a few percent of target. Maybe hunting isn't popular there?

Totally anecdotal, but my experience corroborates this. I lived in Hampshire for three years recently and despite lots of searching, never saw a live hedgehog and only two dead ones. In that time I did see probably a dozen badgers and innumerable foxes.

Background: I live in Ireland and hosted 7 hedgehogs in/around our garden last year. 2-3 are probably hibernating within 50m. I tag, track, name & write notes on them each evening. Anecdotally, I've never seen a badger around here though we do have foxes, stoats and, I would expect, badgers.

Hedgehogs represent the most accessible of wild animals. They don't mind human presence and you can literally walk outside with a torch and stand next to them. If you want to understand our attachment to hedgehogs, Hugh Warwicks' books, particularly 'A Prickly Affair', describe our relationship with humour, engaging stories and field research: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Prickly-Affair-Charm-Hedgehog/dp/014.... Likewise, if you'd like to know more about hedgehog behaviour and research, Pat Morris' book is quite definitive: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hedgehogs-British-Natural-History-Co...

Of course badgers will sometimes eat hedgehogs! They both compete for the same food sources (insects, worms, etc), and occupy the same territory (hedgerows, bordering open farmland), and badgers have the means to kill a hedgehog (strong powerful claws). But badgers don't seek out hedgehogs. In areas where food or habitat is scare, they will eat hedgehogs. Why not? You get to take out an ecological competitor AND have a meal! Win-win for the badger. But there's also countless examples of badgers ignoring hedgehogs, or feeding alongside each other both in the wild and urban gardens.

So perhaps the question should be: when don't badgers eat hedgehogs? It appears there's no problem when food is plentiful. Perhaps we should be encouraging hedgerow preservation and reducing pesticide use (i.e., the problem) instead of calling for a cull of badgers (the symptom).

It would be worth referencing the Peoples Trust for Endangered Species statement on Hedgehogs vs Badgers: https://ptes.org/campaigns/hedgehogs/

Largely, this plight of the hedgehog against the dastardly badger is a means of using a well-loved animal to support a cull of badgers aimed at reducing TB in livestock. "Won't somebody please think of the hedgehogs" is now their rallying cry.

The updated lesson from good to great: find your hedgehog concept, and hope you don't encounter your kryptonite / badger

How it is even possible to "open" a hedgehog? I thought these guys are nearly invulnerable, unless rolled in the water.

(No, I won't be looking up the gory details in Youtube...)

I think you only need to do a image search for "badger claws" to get your answer: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=badger+claws

You might want to change to "British Badger Claws" so you don't get Honey Badgers.

> I thought these guys are nearly invulnerable

They're not armored, they just have spines to discourage soft fleshy bits from getting too close. They're preyed on by large birds (some owls, golden eagles — >40% of golden eagle preys in Gotland, ~30% in Estonia), juveniles and sick individuals are preyed upon by dogs and foxes. Badgers are strong enough with long enough claws[0] that they can go through the coat, but AFAIK only bother to do so when very hungry.

Also cars and trucks, hedgehogs are not car-proof.

[0] http://cdn2.arkive.org/media/BD/BD56A45A-197D-4EC4-BC79-D052...

We can't keep regulating nature so that it looks like it has done since our history, creatures should go extinct. it's how evolution works.

>Creatures should go extinct.

We're currently in the midst of a mass extinction which is largely being driven by humanity. The selection pressure that we are placing on many species for outweigh's natural selection's ability to act on random mutation to promote fitter variants.

What you are promoting isn't a course of action that will lead to an alternative, rich ecosystem better suited to current conditions. It would simply lead to an impoverished and more fragile ecosystem, ultimately less capable of supporting humanity, if we want to go down the reductionist utilitarian road.

We are custodians of an astonishingly rich and diverse biosphere, which we are already damaging. We have a duty to try and mitigate that damage.

Not that it's my prediction, but evolution can also work by all humans dying due to the destruction of their environment and then something else evolving of whatever creatures survived. Human extinction is not different from dinosaur extinction; I believe that we'd rather avoid it for selfish reasons, regardless of the fact that it's just one paths of evolution among many. Certainly it being an evolutionary path not unlike others does not make it tempting.

"Evolution" is whatever is happening - survival of the survivors. If humans kill a certain number of badgers and the number of hedgehogs rises plus a bunch of other hard to predict things happens, it's "evolution" as much as humans having killed larger predators and done nothing about badgers and whatever happened next. An alien observer might comment that the number of badgers went down due to humans, or instead that the number of hedgehogs went down due to badgers. The only real question is whether you think more harm than good is done by reducing the number of badgers, and it ought to be answered on specific grounds.

Some creatures also survive, and that's also how evolution works. In fact whatever actually happens is how evolution works...

And I don't see why we can't keep regulating nature.

When i was a kid it wasn't uncommon to open the backdoor in the morning to find hedgehogs curled up on the doormat. I don't think I've even seen evidence of one since then though.

Conventional wisdom in the UK is that their decline is due to decimation of their natural habitat and food sources by us, cars squishing them, slug tablets, people burning piles of leaves (where they sleep) etc etc. Badgers being responsible to any significant degree seems a little far-fetched.

badger badger badger ...

http://www.weebls-stuff.com/badger.html

Mushroom, mushroom.

But badgers eat primarily stoats and voles...

I thought this was going to be some kind of programming analogy, like pets and cattle.

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