SCOTTISH Natural Heritage (SNH) says its plans to remove hedgehogs from the Western Isles are ‘on-going’.
The Uist wader research project was started in 2000 in response to declining numbers of the internationally renowned birds in north Uist because of hedgehogs which feed on the bird’s eggs.
To date more than £2,679,000 million has been invested in the programme with 2,441 hedgehogs removed. In 2011, the project started a new four-year research programme into the islands’ breeding wader populations. SNH has developed the techniques required to capture hedgehogs and is now investigating sources of funding for a large scale removal project.