‘Hedgehog lady’ in plea to gardeners
A WOMAN who devotes hours of her time to looking after sick and injured hedgehogs has urged gardeners to take extra care when using strimmers.
Mel Fitton and 10 volunteers run Shelley Hedgehogs from two hi-tech huts in her garden in Shelley, near Huddersfield. Some of the rescue hedgehogs are brought in for rehabilitation after being injured by strimmers, while others are underweight or sick.
Newborn hoglets require round-theclock feeding which can mean long hours and early starts for volunteers like Mel, who juggles a full-time job alongside caring for hedgehogs.
Mel and her team are busier than ever and can sometimes be caring for up to 60 hedgehogs at once. Although hedgehogs are said to be Britain’s favourite mammal, numbers have declined from an estimated 36 million in the 1950s to as few as 500,000 today. The blame has been put on the destruction of hedges, the use of pesticides, and the obsession with tidy gardens.
Known to many as the ‘hedgehog lady,’ Mel wants people with gardens to take care while using strimmers, and to ensure gardens are passable to the spiny creatures as they go in search of food at night. She wants gardeners to set aside a ‘wild’ area to allow nature to flourish which, in turn, will benefit hedgehogs.
Her own back garden is taken up by two insulated outbuildings, one of them a ‘hedgehog hospital’ which has more than 30 ‘beds’ for sick and injured animals. “People bring the hedgehogs in from all over the place across Huddersfield, Leeds, Sheffield and Barnsley.
“The hospital shed has incubators and is all kitted out. I have spent a lot of money on it. I keep fundraising and a lot of money is spent on medicine and food. We only feed them the best food.”
Mel says a rising number of hedgehogs are being hurt by strimmers. She wants people to check hedges and long grass before they turn on the strimmer.
“They are missing back legs and have their noses strimmed off. Hedgehogs live around the edges of gardens and in compost heaps.
“Please check before you start gardening. The biggest threat to them is mankind.”
Mel wants people to let their gardens, or a section of the garden, ‘return to nature.’
Shelley Hedgehogs is currently appealing for financial help to replace old wooden hutches with modern plastic ones. The Go Fund Me page has raised more than £1,000 and can be found at: www.gofundme.com/f/shelley-hedgehogs.