About 5.1 in x 5.1 in (13 cm x 13 cm) will be perfect You can often find plastic storage boxes available cheaply in your local supermarketĬut a hedgehog-sized entrance hole in one side of your box. Obtain a sturdy wooden or plastic box, which has a removable lid. Here’s how you can create a simple feeding station: If you want to create a more substantial feeding area, you can go the whole hog by creating an enclosed feeding station. To accompany the hedgehog’s meal you should also offer a shallow bowl of fresh water every evening. Not that slugs and snails should be unwelcome in your garden so please don’t poison them with slug pellets. You do not want slugs and snails roaming over the hedgehog’s dinner. Place the bowl/plate outside very night and remove any uneaten food during the daytime. Offer meaty flavours only as fishy flavours can be a bit hit and miss and your hedgehog might not like them. Once you have invited hedgehogs into your garden, the next thing you must do, as a good host, is to offer them some refreshment.Ī shallow bowl or plate containing tinned dog or cat food is their favourite. You can use an old CD as a template as they are about 13cm (5.1 in) by 13cm (5.1in)Īlternatively, remove a brick from the base of your garden wall or dig a tunnel underneath your fence, wall or gate for your visiting hedgehogs to enter and exit your garden. If you and your neighbours do this you will create Hedgehog Highways, where hedgehogs can roam from garden to garden.Ĭreate an access point in your garden such as a small hole in your fence or wall. To encourage hedgehogs into your garden here are a few important tips:įirstly and most importantly, you need to provide them with one or more access/exit points. You may have a beautiful wildlife garden, full of hedgehog friendly bushes where they can curl up to dream the day away but unless your local hedgehogs can access your garden they will not be able to benefit from it. Gardens with walls or fences are inaccessible for hedgehogs, preventing them from roaming and securing the food they need to survive. In towns, cities and villages, they need to be able to access gardens. Hedgehogs roam every night in search of food. We have damaged their natural environment to the point that unless we are proactive in encouraging them and offering them food and protection, they will disappear completely in just a few years. Ideally, nature should be left alone or managed thoughtfully with a very light touch approach but our destruction and damage to our environment has made it necessary for remedial, positive action to be taken. Researching into the number of hedgehogs sighted in Cornwall, Cornwall Wildlife Trust has launched Operation Hedgehog working with Cornwall Mammal Group, Prickles and Paws Hedgehog Rescue and the University of Exeter Hedgehog numbers have continued to fall, particularly in the countryside. By 1995 the estimated number had dropped to about 1.1 million in England. What is more difficult to understand though, is how this has been allowed to happen on such a massive scale.ĭuring the 1950s, hedgehog numbers are estimated to have been 30 million or more. Insects are disappearing which affects not only hedgehogs but other small mammals and wild birds.Īdd to this the development of land for building homes and roads, loss of woodlands and permanent grassland which all contribute to a massive loss and severe fragmentation of habitat and it is not difficult to see why hedgehog numbers have declined. With the massive expansion of factory farming techniques with more intensive agriculture, field sizes have increased and hedgerows have been ripped out, monoculture crops have become prevalent which discourage insect life and the explosion of agro chemical usage has made much of the countryside, at best uninviting and in many cases deadly for our small prickly pals and much of our native wildlife. Our rural environment is very different today to what it was in the 1960s.

So, why are these cute prickly mammals disappearing from our gardens and our countryside? Nowadays however, unless you volunteer at a hedgehog rescue, it’s likely that you’ve never seen one in your garden.Ĭhildren growing up today will have to be extremely lucky to see one and that’s very sad. How many times have you seen a hedgehog? If you’re over 50, chances are you will have seen a few of them when you were a child.

Hedgehog Numbers are in Serious Decline - Find out what you can do to help hedgehogs

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