Protection
Generally, the hedgehog is widely distributed and can be found in good numbers where people are tolerant of their residence in gardens. To date, the IUCN classifies the species as Least Concern and currently the population as Stable. In some areas, they are common victims of road kills and may hunted by dogs, such as in Sardinia. On 28 August 2007, the new Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) included the European hedgehog on the list of species and habitats in the UK that need conservation and greater protection.
In Denmark and Poland, hedgehogs are protected by law. It is illegal to capture or hurt them, but it is accepted to house underweight hedgehogs found out during winter.
A low coverage assembly of the genome of Erinaceus europaeus was released by the Broad Institute in June 2006 as part of the Mammalian Genome Project.
Read more about this topic: European Hedgehog
Famous quotes containing the word protection:
“We all cry out that the world is corrupt,—and I fear too justly,—but we never reflect, what we have to thank for it, and that it is our open countenance of vice, which gives the lye to our private censures of it, which is its chief protection and encouragement.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected—those, precisely, who need the laws’s protection most!—and listens to their testimony.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)
“Take away from the courts, if it could be taken away, the power to issue injunctions in labor disputes, and it would create a privileged class among the laborers and save the lawless among their number from a most needful remedy available to all men for the protection of their business interests against unlawful invasion.... The secondary boycott is an instrument of tyranny, and ought not to be made legitimate.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)