A hilarious, baffling, and entertaining jaunt around the world--from the English Isles to the Rocky Mountains to China's Shaanxi Province-- in search of an unknown hedgehog, who just happens to share the same name as the author.

For more than twenty years, Hugh Warwick has tracked hedgehogs across the English Isles, searching the shingle beaches of Dungeness and the rocky coves of Uist in the slim hopes of coming across the hedgehog's tiny, but unmistakable, paw-prints. Warwick isn't alone in his endeavors. In England and Wales, the Environment Agency, Great Britain's leading environmental group, recently selected the hedgehog as its new mascot; while, in America, which lacks a native hedgehog species, fanciers flock to the bi-annual Mile High Hedgehog Show to celebrate en masse the little spiny urchin. But, why the sudden interest in the hedgehog? Why does it seem to have such universal appeal?

In The Hedgehog’s Dilemma, Warwick, an environmental writer and photographer, gets to the bottom of the sudden boom in hedgehog popularity, and examines the relationship between the hedgehog and man, covering both the mammal's natural and un-natural evolution, from despised vermin to much-beloved beast. Along the way, he comes across a group of scientists in the Shaanxi Province of central China who have discovered a new breed of hedgehog, about which nothing is known in the Western world; they call this new hedgehog, serendipitously enough, Hugh's Hedgehog. This is the true story about how these two Hughs finally came together.

Reviews

"Told with quick wit and compassion, Warwick’s tale about the enigmatic animals zigzags across the United Kingdom and around the globe over two decades...The Hedgehog’s Dilemma invokes a whimsical sentimentality, but Warwick has found these prickly mammals can inspire British suburbanites to care about conservation. “The dilemma we face,” he says, “is trying to get close enough to the wild without corrupting it out of existence.”—Katherine Tweed, Audubon, Read full review.