An engaging, occasionally philosophical read on invasive species, inspired by one man and his devotion to studying hedgehogs
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From cane toads to grey squirrels, mink to parakeets, invasive species are an enormous conservation headache. So huge that the UN Convention on Biological Diversity puts them in the top five significant threats to biodiversity, alongside climate change.
There’s another problem: invasive species polarise opinion and the public discourse about what to do about them – usually culling or removal – isn’t exactly renowned for its nuance. Undaunted, Hugh Warwick, the author of this engagingly written, challenging and fabulously nuanced book, wades into the debate. In doing so, he undoubtedly makes life harder for himself: Warwick has devoted his working life to studying one of these problem animals – hedgehogs – and is not only a spokesperson for the British Hedgehog Preservation Society but even has a tattoo of one. Nevertheless, he takes the bold step outside his own bubble. It’s a necessary move – only in taking an outside position is he able to understand arguments for killing animals that simply could not ‘win’ if viewed from within his own sphere.
If you’re an absolutist when it comes to animal rights, you’re in for something of a shock. A complex and subtle problem, Carl Sagan once argued, can only have a complex and subtle solution; we need people to be able to think complex and subtle thoughts. And the arguments get even more difficult when it’s a native species that is causing trouble. Red kites, a genuine conservation triumph, turn out to be a headache as they have a taste for lapwing chicks. Then there’s rewilding: absent predators, if you want nature to get on with regrowing woodlands then you’ll have to ‘manage’ the deer. And Homo sapiens certainly isn’t off the hook, for we have laid much of the groundwork for invasives. The (non-invasive) elephant in the room is intensive agriculture, which depletes wildlife and creates space for invasives.
‘Manage’ is of course a euphemism for shooting, poisoning, trapping, bonking on the head (the most humane method for cane toads apparently is refrigeration, followed by freezing). But no normal person is going to enjoy killing wildlife. ‘Are you wondering if I have turned into a psychopath, or whether I was one to begin with?’ a culler drily replies to Warwick’s pondering of what culling does to the person who carries it out.
The chapter on hedgehogs is clearly the most emotionally demanding for Warwick. We learn of their marauding instincts in New Zealand, the headaches they cause in Uist, where the RSPB says they are the main predator of wader eggs and a key factor in breeding success. It’s a saga of airlifts and bounty schemes pour encourager les autres. Speciesism is at work everywhere: parakeets outcompete woodpeckers and nuthatches but ‘people love them’. It would be easier to remove hedgehogs from problem areas if they weren’t so cute, yet the extermination of rats and mink goes ahead with little fuss.
In fact, Warwick points out, there are three rats: the lab rat that gets worked on to understand disease; the rat that eats garden bird food; and the pet rat, treated with kindness and veterinary care. The incongruity, argues Warwick, is that lab rats are strictly regulated – as a society, we deem them more worthy of care than broiler chickens or game birds that can be blasted out of the sky with little oversight for the suffering this can cause.
The book is far more than a binary scurry through the invasive species catalogue. Not only is there a lot of killing, there is a considerable degree of philosophical input. Musing over the red squirrel, Warwick wonders: ‘Do we sit back and let our ancestors’ mistakes rob us of these tufty eared beauties? Or do we defend islands, killing greys?’ He applies the classic thought experiment: five people are tied to a train track; a single person on another parallel track. You can pull the lever, divert the train and save five – but kill one who would otherwise have lived. Warwick concludes he would pull the lever but describes himself as a deeply troubled utilitarian.
History’s Great Brains are also deployed. While humans have souls, proposed René Descartes, animals are essentially automata. Kant argued irrational animals didn’t warrant moral consideration. But if capacity and human exceptionalism are the determining factors, ponders Warwick, that’s bad news for ‘infants, those with dementia and the very drunk’. For a book full of so much death, this is typical of the humour that helps it change gear at the right times. The cocaine hippos of Colombia raise a smile: drug baron Pablo Escobar imported hippos from Africa for his private zoo; after his death in a 1990s shootout, the hippos escaped, bred and 150 now rampage around the Magdelena river basin. The story stops being amusing when you learn of their impact on native fauna and flora, including the manatee and capybara.
Warwick had hoped to find evidence to inform a robust stand one way or another on invasives, but playing God turns out to be far from straightforward. Decisions, he concludes, must be informed not by levels of cuteness but on a case-by-case basis; these may ‘not necessarily be correct but have at least been thought about.’
The people Warwick meets – gamekeepers, wildlife experts, people whose hearts are, he says, ‘tied closely to the land’ – inform his views, sometimes change them, always challenge them. Stepping outside his bubble, exploring those of other people, he seems to have stumbled into the intersection where the bubbles overlap and where, he concludes, perhaps optimistically, most people are found.
