Hedgehogs in the UK are reported to be in serious trouble and we need to think about what we can do to keep them.
Studies show that a key cause of them dying out is that our landscapes are being fenced off into ever smaller fragments. We need to make sure our gardens and those in new housing developments include a ‘hedgehog highway’. That is a 13 cm hole in the bottom of a fence that allows hedgehogs to move freely between gardens to find food and find a mate.
This simple move would have a big impact on the UK’s hedgehogs – and it’s cheap and easy. We need to ensure every new housing development builds in these holes for hedgehog highways to allow gardens to connect and create the pathways they need to survive. It’s estimated that numbers of hedgehogs are down 95% since the 1950s.
