This year, one of SPEAC’s areas of focus is hedgehogs, a
species which you don’t often hear much about but which is close to extinction
in the UK. In the 1960s there were around 36 million of them in the UK and they
were common even in London, but this number has plummeted to less than 500,000
and fell by 93% in the last 20 years alone. At this rate, they are predicted to
be extinct by 2025.
This population collapse is largely due to the loss and
fragmentation of habitats, increased road traffic, tidier gardens which no
longer provide a hospitable environment for them to live or forage for food and
the use of pesticides which can poison hedgehogs. Clearly it isn’t possible for
us to tackle all of these problems single-handedly, but there are many ways in
which everyone can help to protect hedgehogs. One of the biggest reasons for
their decline is habitat loss, as hedgehogs need wild areas such as dense
hedgerows, overgrown grass, piles of leaf litter and logs and old abandoned
sheds or barn, but unfortunately parks and gardens are kept so tidy nowadays
that they struggle to find suitable places to live.
If you have a garden, try
to leave an area of it to grow wild so that any nearby hedgehogs can build a
nest, particularly if you live further out of London or have a country house.
Pesticides can be toxic to hedgehogs, so refrain from using these – if you’re
lucky enough to have a hedgehog in your garden, they’ll eat the slugs for you!
Lawnmowers injure and kill hundreds of hedgehogs each year, so ask your parents
and relatives to check the grass that they are going to cut before they start
doing so to make sure that there aren’t any hedgehogs in it, as they won’t run
away and can very easily be wounded. If your garden fence doesn’t have a gap
underneath it, make a few small holes along the bottom it to enable hedgehogs
to pass through, as they can travel up to three miles in a night to find food, but
need to be able to walk through gardens in order to do so safely. They
frequently cannot do this because most garden fences don’t have a gap between
them and the ground and this is one of the reasons that so many of them have
died out. If you think that you live in an area where there are hedgehogs, you
can support them by leaving out food for them, as they can struggle to find
enough to eat, particularly in the winter. Any meat-based cat or dog food,
peanuts, unsweetened muesli, sunflower seeds or cooked meat leftovers are
suitable, although contrary to popular belief, bread and
milk are not, as they cannot digest them. 
If we don’t want to see these creatures vanish from the UK
before we are 30, it is up to all of us to follow as many of these strategies
as we can and spread the word to friends and family! SPEAC held a bake sale at
the start of the spring term to pay for the sponsorship of three hedgehogs for
the MIVth, UIVth and LVth from Prickles Hedgehog rescue centre to help support
their wonderful conservation work. As part of science week, last week SPEAC
held a session to make pompom hedgehogs as well as a hedgehog treasure hunt to
raise awareness of the issue which both had a fantastic turnout.
Thank you to
everyone who got involved, especially those who baked for the bake sale and we
hope that you’ll try to make your home and neighbourhood more
hedgehog-friendly!
SPEAC xx
