NHS* in a garden shed *that’s National Hedgehog Service
Schoolgirls save more than 400 injured animals
THEY were just nine when they discovered Britain’s hedgehogs were under threat.
Determined to help their favourite animals, Sophie Smith and Kyra Barboutis set about establishing a rescue centre of their own.
Since starting Hedgehog Friendly Town in their back gardens four years ago, the schoolgirls have saved more than 400 of the sick and injured creatures.
Sophie and Kyra, now both 13, care for the animals in their spare time after school and at weekends.
Initially, they simply fed and housed one or two hedgehogs until they could be released back into the wild. But now they have up to 15 animals in their care at any one time and have been trained to give them injections and medicines.
Their reputation has grown so much that even local vets in their home town of Stratford-upon-Avon now bring them hedgehogs to care for.
Kyra said: ‘We absolutely love hedgehogs, but we are really worried about them. We only started off as foster carers with a couple of cages. As Sophie and I
‘We look after them in spare time from school’
learnt more, it meant we were able to care for more of them.
‘We spend all day at school and then look after the hedgehogs during all of our spare time. But we don’t mind as we love looking after them and we both want to become vets one day.’
Kyra and Sophie got all their equipment through fundraising, and generous locals donate food if they are running low.
Their dedication to the animals – which they give names such as Arnold Spikesnegger and Quillium Shakespeare – has been recognised by Sir David Attenborough, who told them in a letter: ‘I’m so glad you are doing so much to help hedgehogs. They need all the help they can get.’
The girls give speeches at local events and schools to raise awareness of the plight of hedgehogs, numbers of which have fallen from 30 million in the 1950s to under a million due to loss of habitat.
In March they got housebuilder Taylor Wimpey to rethink hedge netting at a nearby development which would have trapped hibernating hedgehogs.