2 minute read
Pledge to HELP HEDGEHOGS throughout 2020:
from 4Dorset March 2020
by Dorset View
Monthly top tips showing how you can help
Advertisement
Hedgehog family © Chris Groves for Hedgehog Street
Twelve monthly top tips showing how to help wild, native hedgehogs have been revealed by Hedgehog Street, enabling everyone to help save Britain’s favourite mammal throughout the year. Hedgehog Street, a national campaign run by wildlife charities the British Hedgehog Preservation Society (BHPS) and People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES), has launched a new ‘Hedgehog Street’ app, which sends its users interactive top tips every month and offers all sorts of other helpful hedgehog advice too. The new app was launched in time for National Hedgehog Day on Sunday 2 February.
Grace Johnson, hedgehog officer for Hedgehog Street explains: “We know hedgehogs are in trouble – we’ve lost 50 per cent of hedgehogs in rural areas since 2000, which is a staggering amount. But, there are ways that we can all help. Our monthly top tips ranging from leaving a shallow bowl of water out for thirsty 'hogs in the summer, to providing nesting materials and supplementary food before hedgehogs hunker-down for hibernation, will be sent straight to your smartphone, making helping hedgehogs easier than ever before.
“By having the Hedgehog Street app in your pocket, we also hope that anytime anyone sees a wild hedgehog, they’ll be able to tell us about it straight away by recording it on the BIG Hedgehog Map, via the app. The more records of hedgehogs we get, the better we can understand where they’re living and where they need the most help.”
App users can also upload photos and see a variety of FAQs – as well as some super snaps in the ‘Hedgehog Gallery’. All of this and more is accessible from any smartphone or tablet, allowing and encouraging users to help hedgehogs on the go, wherever they are. The app is available to both Apple and Android users and is downloadable for free from the App Store or Google Play, simply search ‘Hedgehog Street’.
Native hedgehog © Stephen Oliver
BHPS and PTES teamed up in 2011 and have been working together to help halt the dramatic decline in native hedgehogs via Hedgehog Street ever since. In their State of Britain’s Hedgehogs 2018 report, it was revealed that hedgehog numbers in the countryside have plummeted by half since 2000, but that urban hedgehogs appear to be faring better. The report showed that although hedgehogs have declined by a third in towns and cities since 2000, the rate of decline is slowing, and in some places numbers seem to even be growing.
Multiple factors are contributing to the decline in hedgehog numbers, including tidy, fenced in gardens in urban areas, the loss of hedgerows and intensification of agriculture in rural areas, and casualties on roads, to name a few. Hedgehog Street is working to combat these factors where possible, by encouraging people to make small hedgehog-friendly changes to their own gardens, which could make all the difference. To date, over 70,000 volunteer ‘Hedgehog Champions’ across the UK have registered to help the nation’s favourite mammal, but more help is always needed.
To help hedgehogs, download the Hedgehog Street app for free, from either the App Store or Google Play. If you don’t have a smartphone, you can access top tips, FAQs and more, online at: www.hedgehogstreet.org.
Hedgehog highway in Barnes, London © Henry Johnson, Hedgehog Champion
