Five Tips to Help Hedgehogs
By: Tony Nevin
Tags: Animals, Wellbeing, Conservation, Wildlife, Education

Animal Advocacy

Five Tips to Help Hedgehogs

Photo by Dušan Veverkolog on Unsplash

Hedgehogs are one of the few universally loved creatures. This is despite them being quite messy little things. Gardeners love the fact that they eat lots of the common pests that attack their favourite plants. Sometimes they are living in our back yards without us having a clue.

Sadly they are declining in the UK. There are many reasons for this, and pretty much all are due to us having a negative impact on their environment. Before we look at what we can do to help them let’s first take stock of what their natural environment is, and what their requirements from it are.

There’s a clue in their name. They are shy, secretive creatures and are easy prey for badgers, and even brown rats. In the past they would also have been at risk from wolves, lynx, and bears. These aren’t an issue any longer in the UK as we’ve got rid of anything that might pose the slightest bit of competition to us. Therefore hedgehogs like cover. They build sleeping and brood nests in the undergrowth and line it with soft, dry vegetation where they will sleep during daylight hours, emerging to forage at dusk when they feel some safety. Their drab coloration helps them blend into the shadows of this time of day.

Photo by Alicja Gancarz on Unsplash

They eat most invertebrates but have a real appetite for slugs and earthworms. They will also occasionally forage fallen fruit, but mostly they are small carnivores. If you ever look inside the mouth of one you’ll see the dentition is just like that of a miniature dog. Over a single evening an adult hog can cover a massive patch of ground whilst foraging. If it’s a female with young in a nest it will travel up to mile in radius from the nest whilst suckling. Once the hoglets are large enough they will join their mother on her nightly feeds.

They also need access to water. Hedgehogs are good swimmers and will often visit ponds or slow flowing streams to quench their thirst.

Therefore hedgehogs require the following :

1. Suitable cover to sleep and nest in

2. A continuous supply of fresh live food

3. Access to fresh water

What have we done that has had a negative impact on hedgehogs?

1. We continuously build on greenbelt areas, creating densely packed housing estates with tiny gardens that often lack greenery, or adequate cover. These gardens are using securely fenced in for privacy and security, denying access for terrestrial wildlife such as hedgehogs.

2. Gardens are often so well-manicured that they are devoid of the varied food sources that hogs require. The use of chemical poisons to get rid of slugs can kill a healthy hog if it consumes any afflicted molluscs.

Photo by Advocator SY on Unsplash

3. These gardens also lack water at ground level, or have ornamental ponds with vertical sides that are a death trap to any hog that might fall in.

4. Along with new housing projects are roads to access them. These create dangerous crossing points for hogs. Their defence is to stay still or curl into a ball in the presence of a threat. This offers little chance of survival when faced with a motor vehicle. Major road networks can cut off populations, creating fragmented gene pools that can lead to increased in-breeding and the associated risks to population health.

5. Noise pollution and street lighting have all impacted on these shy creatures. Hedgehogs will jump at the slightest sound.

6. Domestic dogs will often attack and/or play with hedgehogs often inflicting fatal injuries on them.

What can we do to help hedgehogs?

1.On a personal level we can look at our own gardens or land, however small it might be. If we have gardens that border areas of scrub, or with linked hedgerows then we can look at creating small access portals within any fencing that is large enough for an adult hedgehog but not for larger animals.

2.Within the garden we can look at putting in a hedgehog box, positioned in a shady, secluded area at the back of a shrub border or similar cover.

3.Putting a shallow bowl sunk into a flower bed or section of lawn will provide water for hogs and birds. It needs to be shallow enough to allow young hogs to easily climb out should they fall in.

4. Avoid using poisons to control slugs and snails. There are hedgehog friendly ways of deterring these from sensitive areas of the garden.

5. Providing food in the evenings. This should NOT contain any dairy as hedgehogs are lactose intolerant. There are products available now that have been formulated specifically for hedgehogs. Failing this tinned cat food is a suitable substitute.

Photo by Hans-Olof Andersson on Unsplash

What else is needed?

Government and community authorities need to consider the very real and long lasting impact of road and building construction on our native wildlife, and the fine balance that exists within this extremely complex situation.

Major road planning and construction needs to seriously start implementing wildlife bridges to ensure not just survival but also the maintenance of healthy diverse populations within each species. At the time of writing we only have a couple of these in the whole of the UK!

Street lighting needs to be universally more wildlife friendly. This is slowly being implemented throughout the UK as legacy lights are replaced, so at least this is gradually happening.

Planning departments need to implement wildlife friendly conditions to all new developments. Most people know the benefits on mental health to seeing wildlife and green areas. If we make these such that they actually help support wildlife from tiny invertebrates right the way up to whatever megafauna we still have left, we will create a positive legacy to future generations to encourage them to further protect this amazing planet. If we ask, and demand these things, eventually the powers to be will have to take notice, but we need to do our bit first to get the ball rolling. Good luck and here’s to a future where every garden is visited by a hedgehog, sharing this environment and enhancing our lives.