Leave my mate brock alone

MY WIFE, on returning from gallivanting in London, is invariably dismayed to see there has been little or no progress on the home front. What she finds hard to understand is that my getting out into my plantation, and performing eco-system services on behalf of invertebrates, is absolutely vital at this bleakest time of year. By my action of stamping on dead and brittle twigs to break them down I am helping to occupy that ecological niche filled in ancient Britain by wild boar, tarpan and aurochs. The resultant debris creates a humus-rich woodland soil full of beetles and earthworms, which are hoovered up by badgers, that most controversial of beasts.

The leading local brock has honoured me by appointing a dedicated portion of my territory as a public (for badgers) latrine. I was particularly pleased that he had chosen to site it on the direct path of the right of way that passes through the plantation. But badgers, currently in the doghouse for spreading TB to cattle, are now accused of a secondary crime.

For all the time we have lived in this Wiltshire village, I have been missing the snuffling presence of the traditional British garden mammal as celebrated in Shakespeare, Beatrix Potter and in heraldry. We are told that two-thirds of hedgehogs have vanished since the year 2000. It’s only partly to do with the disappearance of hedges. Who or what is to blame? Allegedly brock, a known predator of hedgehogs.

Then suddenly last summer, as I searched the sky for shooting stars on my back lawn, my foot alighted on a ball. The ball contracted and I yelped ‘Quick Mary! Our first hedgehog in 27 years.’ Mary, already in bed ready for her 5am start the next day, did not share my excitement. Opening the upstairs window (which she is forbidden to do as it upsets the nesting housemartins) she yawned ‘Is that good?’

‘Well, my whole world view has been shattered. I thought they couldn’t co-exist with badgers!’

‘Couldn’t you have told me in the morning?’ came her disappointing response.

I took the matter up with the experts. It’s a prickly subject but Dominic Dyer at the Badger Trust has put me right: the two can co-exist provided there is enough habitat and forage for both nocturnal species. By way of proof he will be sending me a photo of a badger and hedgehog drinking from the same trough. Moreover, he claims, some of the most dramatic declines in hedgehogs have been seen in areas with the fewest badgers, like East Anglia. Hedgehogs are only a small part of the menu of badgers, just as hares are a very small part of the menu of humans, but when resources are scarce they go back on the menu.

While the badger predates the hedgehog, hedgehogs themselves can swim and climb trees. They kill frogs, rob birds’ nests and have been known to tackle snakes. Dyer emphasises that, although in one night the hedgehog can roam an area the size of an eighteen-hole golf course, his natural home is the garden. It is up to gardeners to make his life easier.

A Mr Thompson, hedgehog warden from the Warwickshire Wildlife Trust, says the ideal hedgehog habitat is a row of terraced houses, with hedgehog-sized holes in every fence, which includes ‘a few well-kept lawns, a few less well-kept lawns and in a perfect world one neighbour who has annoyed everyone else by letting his garden go to ruin.’ This was music to my ears. It is the exact template of what pre-exists in our own village. All that is missing is the hedgehog-sized holes.

The truth is the cause of hedgehog decline is not yet proven. Ecology is an infant science. We now know bread and milk will make them sick and strimmers and slug pellets are a real danger. I myself would demonise security lights and wind chimes.

It’s very much a case of winning hearts and minds, but I can start the work of persuading neighbours to cut holes in their fences without delay. Where there was one, more are bound to follow!

Mary seems less pleased that my eco-duties have suddenly become more onerous.