Sonic the Hedgehog (Petition)
The change.org petition calling on Housing and Planning Minister Kit Malthouse to make the integration of hedgehog highways compulsory in all new build housing developments has taken everyone by surprise, moving at speeds that would impress our blue cousin ‘Sonic’. By breakfast on Tuesday 2nd October there were already over 190,000 people signed up.
Why has this taken the public by storm? The hedgehog is the nation’s favourite animal – every poll tells the same story. Yet the hedgehog is suffering from a dramatic population decline. The latest State of Britain’s Hedgehogs report from the Hedgehog Street campaign shows how in just the last 17 years urban hedgehog numbers are down by 30% and rural hedgehogs down by 50%. It is not unreasonable to argue that there has been a 95% decline in hedgehog numbers since the end of the Second World War.
The petition was started by HedgeOX coordinator Hugh Warwick – the author and ecologist who also acts as a spokesperson for the British Hedgehog Preservation Society. “We know that hedgehog numbers are declining,” he said, “and we know that one of the biggest problems they face is the way we chop our land up into smaller pieces. This often happens when new fences are put in place – and as we are facing a house building boom there are going to be hundreds of thousands of new barriers to hedgehog movement.”
Perhaps surprisingly, new housing can help hedgehogs, as long as it is done with wildlife in mind. And this petition is calling on Kit Malthouse to do just that – make sure all new fences have hedgehog holes built into them. Just 13cm across, these holes help hedgehogs move the considerable distances we know they can travel each night – 2km is not uncommon.
Couple this with wildlife sensitive planting, ponds, and bat and swift bricks, new housing estates can offer homes for hedgehogs and other wildlife as well as for people.
I use my car infrequently, once or twice every few weeks. What I notice on the roads in Northumberland and the surrounding area are much fewer dead hedgehogs. We could console ourselves that less are being killed this way, but sadly, it is more likely to be less are available to be killed. For several years running now I have been lucky to have hedgehogs visit my garden only a couple of miles from the city centre in a residential, but run-down area of Newcastle upon Tyne. However, each year I have also seen the flattened remains on the surrounding streets. So it will become increasingly more difficult for hedgehogs to increase in numbers in these urban areas. where at least the environment of neglected gardens would benefit them.
it is a good observation you make Pamela, in fact we use the change in the number of hedgehogs found dead on the roads as a key indicator of population change … more dead hogs means more hogs … sadly.
Please try to encourage home owners not to cut down their hedges and trees as the wildlife need this protection
more than ever.
Please encourage friends and family… amd everyone not to use slug killer chemicals. Slugs are food for hedgehog. Chemicals are bad for them as well. 🙁
The rise in badger road deaths compared to the fall in hedgehog road kill is, I believe, no co-incidence. I have a large, overgrown and extremely hedgehog friendly garden with open access to farmland but the only evidence I have seen recently of one of these delightful creatures was a disembowelled carcass.