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CrowdScience

How Do You Stop a Hedgehog Invasion?

CrowdScience

BBC

Science

4.81K Ratings

🗓️ 3 August 2018

⏱️ 32 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Hedgehogs are the UK’s favourite British mammal. They have cute furry faces, a snuffly nose and the ability to gobble up garden slugs. What’s not to like? Answer: quite a lot if you live in the Outer Hebrides. Hedgehogs were introduced to South Uist in the 1970s as garden pest controllers, but are now serious pests in their own right – munching their way through the eggs and chicks of globally important wading bird populations. This emblem of cuteness is really a killer. So what’s to be done?

That’s the quandary facing this week’s CrowdScience thanks to a question from Juan Carlos in Cuba. He wants to know how different parts of the world are dealing with invasive species – one of the biggest threats to global biodiversity. Presenter Anand Jagatia heads to the Uists to hear how having an invader that’s loved by millions can cause a whole host of problems. He also discovers how various warring parties eventually came together to solve this very prickly problem.

Also in the programme, Anand travels to South Africa to find out how researchers are coping with invasive trees by introducing another non-native species. While in the Caribbean, we hear how people are dealing with invasive fish by eating them.

Presenter: Anand Jagatia Producer: Anna Lacey

(Photo: A European hedgehog. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0

You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and maybe it's when I had a hand in.

0:04.0

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0:08.0

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0:12.0

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0:14.4

You start with just a good idea, but then you have the space to see where it goes.

0:18.4

And doing that at the BBC means we can really run with the best stories

0:21.9

while developing the most unique audio talent.

0:24.3

So if you like what you hear, why not check out the huge range of podcast we've got on BBC

0:29.1

Sounds. So these terms are like pretty aggressive.

0:37.0

Are they protecting their necks?

0:39.0

Yeah.

0:40.0

And we were okay because we are at the path just there.

0:42.0

So they're used to people walking past along this path but I think it would step off the path it would attack us.

0:48.0

You're listening to crowd science from the BBC World Service, the program that answers all your questions about

0:54.5

science, our world and the universe. I'm Anan Jagatier and this week I'm on the

1:00.7

Scottish island of North Uist taking in the pure white sands and

1:04.6

gorgeous blue sea whilst trying not to anger the native seabirds.

1:08.6

So we'll have like very high populations of waiters.

1:11.6

Joanne Ferguson from Scottish natural heritage is showing me around.

1:16.0

So we're standing just on the coast of Eusta.

1:18.4

The sea you can probably hear behind us, beautiful countryside kind of surrounding us.

1:22.3

Can you describe this landscape

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