'Hedgehog Champions' needed to record hog behaviour

Hedgehog Street, a nationwide campaign set up by the Ludlow-based British Hedgehog Preservation Society (BHPS) and the People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES), to halt the ongoing decline in native hedgehogs, has this week launched ‘Hedgehogs After Dark’.

Over the course of several weeks, champions are being encouraged to carefully observe hedgehogs at a distance in their gardens, recording all the different behaviours they see. This will allow conservationists to discover, and better understand, the hidden lives of the UK’s hedgehogs this summer.

Following Hedgehog Awareness Week 2020, which took place last week, Hedgehogs After Dark will run until July 26.

Hedgehogs are nocturnal mammals, so the aim of the project is to record what hedgehogs are up to in the evening, when they are most active. So if at dusk and after dark you spot behaviours such as feeding or drinking, travelling across a garden (or using a hedgehog highway), swimming in a pond, mating, grooming or nesting, Hedgehog Street wants to hear about it.

Grace Johnson, hedgehog officer for Hedgehog Street explains: “We know gardens are vital habitats for hedgehogs, but we’d like to understand exactly how hedgehogs are using them.

Changes

"To do this, we need the public’s help to tell us about any behaviours they spot, which will enable us to learn even more about hedgehogs, and how we can best conserve them further. Lockdown is a great opportunity to watch, connect with and help our wildlife, so if you’re lucky enough to see a hedgehog in your garden, we’d love to hear about it and to find out what he or she is up to."

Hedgehog Champions - members of the public who have pledged to help hedgehogs by making small changes to their gardens - can start logging any behaviours seen from this week.

Those who aren’t already Hedgehog Champions but want to take part can sign up for free online at Hedgehog Street. Participants can then record what they see in their garden on the Hedgehogs After Dark behaviour log and are encouraged to keep watch over the summer to report any new or repeat behaviours.

Those who take part in Hedgehogs After Dark will have the opportunity to win a free Hedgehog Hamper, crammed full of hedgehog goodies.

You can upload photos to social media using #HedgehogsAfterDark, and if you have a wildlife camera in your garden, you can upload your best videos to the Hedgehogs After Dark behaviour log too.

The latest State of Britain’s Hedgehogs report, published in 2018 by BHPS and PTES, revealed that 50 per cent of rural hedgehog populations and 30 per cent of urban hedgehog populations have been lost since 2000. Tidy, fenced in gardens in urban areas and loss of hedgerows and intensification of agriculture in rural areas are some of the factors contributing to this decline.