Slug pellets 'killing off our hedgehogs'

Slug pellets 'killing off our hedgehogs' From the Daily Echo

Sunday, June 10, 2007

A HEDGEHOG doctor, who has committed her life to saving the small prickly mammals, says that people are unwittingly poisoning them by putting out slug pellets.

Angela Squires established the Care, Rehabilitation and Aid for Sick Hedgehogs hospital in Canford Heath in 1990, which is now a registered charity.

She has been releasing her small patients back in to people's gardens only to find they have been dying.

Now she is convinced that this is because of slug pellets, which are ingested by the hedgehogs when they eat the slugs, causing a slow and agonising death.

She claims that the reason why people have been spotting more slugs and snails recently is because of the decline in hedgehog numbers.

She said: "Sadly they are now so rare that they have become endangered mammals and have disappeared from certain areas. Apart from isolated pockets they are no longer found in Ferndown and West Moors and because they are protected by the Wild Mammals Act, we are not allowed to return them to those areas.

"The main reason for their decline is slug or rat poison. As hedgehogs can eat around 100 slugs a night, they are building up deadly toxins in their bodies, which will eventually kill them.

"There is no antidote to the poison and these poor animals die in extreme pain, bleeding internally. I have treated many hedgehogs, some of which have been injured by strimmers and have made them better, only to find they are dying in unusual circumstance when I have released them. It is heartbreaking.

"Ninety per cent of slugs live underground anyway, so pellets will not get to them."

Angela says that if people have to take action, the best course is to use Nematodes, microscopic worms that come in clay packs, which are watered in, to the garden. If people have to use pellets, perhaps until the hedgehogs are established, then they should use the white pellets, which say Safe For Wildlife and not the blue ones, which contain Metaldehyde.