The system is self-regulating. The hedgehogs are self-regulating out of existence. If you don&#x27;t like that outcome, something needs to be done about it.<p>If you&#x27;re comfortable with that, then there&#x27;s no problem here, sure.<p>&quot;there&#x27;s absolutely no reason for it other than sport, &quot;<p>You mean, other than the reason given in the article?<p>I will say he&#x27;s at least objectively correct in one part of his article; yes, other parts of the world do this sort of thing all the time. Huge swathes of the United States <i>must</i> have deer hunting season, and even if one finds hunting personally distasteful, the environmentalists generally don&#x27;t complain too much about it. Every few years the deer hunters don&#x27;t get assigned enough permits, or the deer hunters don&#x27;t take them all, and we all get to live through a reminder of what happens when there are too many deer. Deer have the difference that when you hit them with the car, you may die, which is not a problem badgers have.<p>But, yes, it is absolutely true that it is well-understood in much of the rest of the world that if you want to live without the apex predators in your food chain that you have to take the responsibility yourself, or the ecosystem will happily &quot;self-regulate&quot; into an unpleasant direction. This is only hypocrisy for radical anarchists; even for libertarians who generally approve of government in monitoring roles, this is just another monitoring role.