Save the Hedgehogs!

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