THE controversial cull of hedgehogs on the Uists looks set to be brought to an end.

Officials at Scottish Natural Heritage are recommending that, instead of being dispatched by lethal injection, the hedgehogs should be relocated to the mainland.

The advice is contained in a paper going to the SNH board meeting in Inverness on Tuesday. It considers a range of future options for controlling the hedgehogs which threaten the internationally important colonies of birds, including a trial translocation.

The about-turn comes after an appeal, made by the Scottish Society for the Protection of Animals earlier this week, that SNH suspend its annual cull in light of research published recently which showed that the animals could be successfully relocated.

In order to test how hedgehogs coped with a move to the mainland, 20 were released at Eglinton Country Park, Irvine, and radio-tracked for a month to find out if the animals would starve in their new environment. A survival rate of 80% was indicated.

It was in 2002 that SNH announced to international outrage that it would embark on a hedgehog cull the following year. It was, it said, the only answer to the devastating effect the hedgehogs were having on the internationally important waders such as lapwings, snipe and redshank. By 2000, the 17,000 pairs of waders in the Uists recorded in 1983 had been halved.

Hedgehogs were introduced to the Uists when a homeowner brought four across in 1974 and a further three a year a later to control garden pests. SNH estimated that there were more than 5000, mostly on South Uist but with smaller colonies on Benbecula and North UIst where the eradication started in 2003.

SNH was adamant that it was more humane to kill them than to try to move them. But the Uist Hedgehog Rescue (UHR) coalition, supported by celebrities including Sir Paul McCartney, Sting and Queen guitarist Brian May, embarked on a counter rescue programme and relocated 756 hedgehogs from the Uists over the last four years while SNH were dispatching 690 from North Uist and Benbecula.

UHR paid islanders a bounty, initially of £5 per hedgehog handed over. They were then transported to the mainland. A statement from SNH yesterday explained the agency's conversion: "SNH has consistently taken advice from the Scottish SPCA on animal welfare issues and until now they have advised that culling was more humane than translocation.

"A trial translocation would, however, need to be subject to an agreed protocol. This would require to address issues such as numbers of animals released, the monitoring of their progress and survival and how the impact on the resident population should be assessed. The detail of this has yet to be discussed with Scottish SPCA."

Ross Minett, spokesperson for UHR, said yesterday: "The proposal that SNH end its cull of hedgehogs on the Uists in favour of translocation to the mainland is great news. We believe that scientific research and decades of practical experience have shown that translocation is the humane and ethical solution to this problem.

"We have written to SNH offering our expertise and experience and are hopeful that its board will choose to end the cull."