- Let areas of garden grow wild to mimic hedgehogs’ natural habitat
- Provide shelter in the colder months through logs piles and compost heaps
- Use garden chemicals such as slug pellets carefully !!! don't use them at all.
- Leave out water and foods such as boiled eggs, chopped nuts and sultanas
- Consider planting hedgerows to help hedgehogs move between gardens
Fay Vass, Chief Executive of the British Hedgehog Preservation Society said:
We are delighted that the Environment Secretary, Elizabeth Truss is speaking out on how to help hedgehogs.
With their population falling by a third in urban areas and by half in rural areas since 2000, doing all we can to help Britain’s only spiny mammal is more important now than ever.
Well here I am quoting from a government petition that asked for hedgehogs to be made a protected species. They refused. Yesterday went to a garden club meeting about hedgehogs, and amongst all the statistics of gloom and doom not much help stood out. We are poisoning the insects and hedgehogs through our farming and gardening methods, plain and simple, we farm every inch of land and suburbanise our gardens, mowing lawns to within one inch of their lives, getting rid of weeds etc. One fact I read, 30s million hedgehogs in the middle of last century, one million today. As the speaker said we are probably moving to the sixth extinction in the world. When I lay it on thick I lay it with a very large trowel ;)
But not all bad news, there are people looking out for hedgehogs, our speaker who lives in York, says that rescued hogs are often placed in the Bishop's walled garden and there are many people willing to give a home to these creatures. We even have a Pickering rescue centre. Here in our garden they would so easily wander onto the road under the gates. We had one last year and C over the road said she had had a house made for hers, but a few bricks and some hay would do, the home has to be dark and snug.
There was a lot of oohs and aahs from the gathered assembly over the 'sweetness' of the hogs but it is sad to see these creatures disappear through illness and road kill, perhaps they need 'reserves' to be protected in. Toni Bunnell, the speaker did make one interesting point, remember all those insects in summer that plastered our clothes or stuck to the windscreen of the car - where have they gone?
Hello there,
ReplyDeleteWe have a resident hedgehog - he/she's currently hibernating in an igloo which we provided. We live in a small town surrounded by lots of roads so I often wonder where it travelled from! Nevertheless it was here for all of last summer and seemed to be quite happy on its own. We live on a cul de sac of about 16 houses. We're the only house with trees/hedges/shrubs/wild flowers etc. The rest seem to be big fans of manicured gardens and ugly fake concrete fences. Maybe that's why we've got a precious hedgehog.
Hi, what a lovely tale, so glad you have a hedgehog. We had one in our last home, lived under the shed and the vicinity was all green space and paths. It is those small spaces of wildness that is important and of course just having a garden with enough of everything such as log piles and compost heaps for the creatures to find insects and snails.
ReplyDeleteI have hedgehogs that cross my lawn and in the summer I can sit and watch them if I want to at dusk criss-crossing from one side to the other and then I suppose they go onward through the fields and back again. Foxes eat hedgehogs as do badgers.
ReplyDeleteVery prickly mouthful for foxes and badgers, gypsies used to eat them as well. Very soothing to watch them go back and forth in the garden Rachel, a meditative process probably;)
ReplyDeleteNo it is not something I look at. I don't actually like hedgehogs and regard them as rats with spines. They are certainly enjoyed by both foxes and badgers, prickles or not.
DeleteLots of people resort to the good old 'rat' ananlogy for creatures they don't like. Thinking here of city pigeons and sea gulls ;) but the hedgehog is definitely cute....
DeleteIf you look at them they look like a rat with prickles. Observe shape. Nothing to do with "resorting to rat analogy". I also don't like badgers but I dont say they look like rats.
DeleteSadly I have a walled and tiered garden now and doubt if I will ever get another hedgehog.
ReplyDeleteYes they don't like steps but should any need rescue you can always get in touch with local RSPCA.
DeleteWe don’t have any here and I have only seen them in pictures. They are sweet looking creatures and it would be sad to lose another species.
ReplyDeleteTheir numbers have gone down so drastically in this country, but if I remember rightly there is a Scottish Isle where they have overbred.
DeleteThis time last year we tried to raise an abandoned baby Hedgehog. Sadly we failed, and later found that it was full of worms, and had probably been rejected by its family.
ReplyDeleteI do use slug pellets on my veg garden, but I ALWAYS buy 'wildlife friendly' pellets. They are widely available, but a bit more expensive than the others. They should be cheaper!
Well at least you tried Cro, I bought the book on the subject, of course it means going to the vet for treatments which is expensive but in this country we have rescue centres as well. Good on you for using the wildlife variety of slug pellets.
ReplyDeleteMy daughter has a small hedgehog and adores it. I think it should be outside in its intended habitat, but it's illegal to put them outside where she lives. That's how she found it---in a hedgehog rescue because someone didn't want it any longer and couldn't let it loose.
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