Langstone, Hampshire: Britain’s hedgehog population has declined by a third in urban areas – but it’s not too late to take action
For the past decade, my garden has been enclosed to provide a home for non-releasable blind and amputee hedgehogs. A six-foot perimeter fence kept them safely contained, but presented an impenetrable barrier to their wild kin, so when my last resident, Poppet, passed away at the grand old age of 10 (a hedgehog’s average life expectancy in the wild is two to three years), I signed up to participate in Hedgehog Street, a nationwide conservation initiative empowering people to improve their neighbourhood for these much-loved mammals.
Since the millennium, Britain’s hedgehog population has declined by a third in urban areas, but the appearance on my driveway of glistening black droppings packed full of invertebrate exoskeletons gave me hope that I wasn’t too late to take action. A foraging hedgehog can roam up to a mile a night, so ensuring they can travel freely between gardens is vital to reduce habitat loss and fragmentation.
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