GOING THE WHOLE HOG
Hedgehog populations have plummeted following a succession of difficult years, but Cal Flyn discovers a lady who is devoted to helping ailing hogs
Our wildlife correspondent Cal Flyn gets up close with some of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle's friends
This past year has been a rough time for Scotland’s hedgehogs. A wet summer followed by a mild autumn – which kept them awake at a time when there was little for them to eat – saw thousands of underweight animals being admitted to wildlife hospitals around the country when they should have been safely bedded down for their winter hibernation.
As a result, animal hospitals have reported that the winter of 2019-20 was the worst year on record for the hedgehog – a disastrous year after a whole series of bad years. Back in 2018, Hedgehog Street, a partnership between the British Hedgehog Preservation Society and the People’s Trust for Endangered Species, published a paper that revealed hedgehog numbers to be plummeting all across the British Isles, particularly in rural areas where hedgehog populations have fallen to around half of what they were in 2000.
In all, numbers are thought to have fallen from more than 30 million across the UK back in the 1950s, to less than a million today. There are a number of factors at play, not least the intensification of farming, which has been shown to fragment their favoured habitats, diminishing hedgehog havens like hedgerows and copses, and eating into their food sources (larvae and soil invertebrates are less common in intensively-farmed ground).
Road deaths – estimated to number as many as 100,000 each year – are significant but so too is predation at the hands (or rather, claws) of badgers, which are both the hedgehog’s main predators and rivals for their key food sources.
Badger numbers have been steadily rising since the introduction of The Protection of Badgers Act in 1992, and it is no accident that a rise in the badger populations often coincides with a decline in that of hedgehogs. Nevertheless, in many places where badgers are absent, hedgehog numbers are also low – indicating that there is far more to the hedgehog’s decline than simply the badger’s success.
Given the precipitous fall-off in hedgehog numbers, it’s never been more important to protect and assist those that we do come across. Hedgehog numbers do tend to be recovering in regions around hedgehog hospitals and wildlife rehabilitation sites, says Nadia Al-Dujaili, who runs the Forth Hedgehog Hospital in Rosyth out of a shed in her back garden.
Nadia fell in love with hedgehogs while working as the manager of the SSPCA’s small mammal unit. ‘I feel like I have a connection to hedgehogs,’ she tells me. ‘That sounds silly, but I empathise with their way of life and their personality – it matches my own. They’re just amazing little animals.’
After a period of ill health, she decided to set up her own initiative in 2014, to allow her to continue working with the animals from home. Although she now has help from a couple of volunteers, Nadia still does most of the daily upkeep. When we speak, she has around 30 hedgehogs in her care, at various stages of recovery, and is awaiting the coming of warmer weather when the majority will be released back into the wild.
‘Most of the time they come to the attention of the public when they are ill. Maybe a high worm burden, chest infection or pneumonia. Sometimes they can suffer serious injuries from strimmers. When they feel rubbish, they get disorientated and don’t know whether they’re coming or going.’
Hedgehogs are nocturnal, so if they are roaming during the day it is usually cause for concern. If you do spot one in your garden, and it appears dopey or confused – and especially if it is sleeping in the open – then put on a pair of gardening gloves and lift it gently into a deep box with a hot water bottle wrapped in a towel and a blanket for it to hide under. Offer it water (not milk), then put the container in a quiet, dark place while you call a hedgehog rescue for advice.
Once out of critical care, Nadia keeps the hedgehogs in recovery pens outside, handling them as little as possible until they are back to a healthy weight. ‘As a rule, I don’t keep them, but I do have
a few long-term residents’ – including her current favourite, Shuggles, a return patient. Having been treated and released back in 2017, he turned up again last October; ‘I thought I was going to cry,’ said Nadia of their reunion. ‘He’d survived all this time! He’s a wee old man with dental issues, so he’s on a liquid diet now.’
In the absence of troubled hedgehogs to tend, there are other ways to help. Report sightings to Hedgehog Street via their interactive online map to assist their researchers. Details of hedgehogs, dead or alive, are very useful to those attempting to estimate populations. Those in Glasgow and the west of Scotland may also be interested in volunteering with The Conservation Volunteers’ torchlight surveys of key sites in May.
But the easiest single thing you might do to help the hedgehog rebound is to cut a hole in your garden fence. A square 13cm by 13cm is plenty for a hedgehog, and too small for most pets to escape through. Convince your neighbours to join you and you’re well on the way to building a hedgehog highway. In autumn, it might also be kind to leave out a little meat-based cat food for your local hedgehogs to help them bulk up before hibernation; they need to weigh more than 600g to get through the winter. With a bit of thought and care, we might hope to cushion the hedgehog from the worst the modern world can throw at it.