Conservation FAQs

Annual surveys of hedgehogs across the UK show an alarming decline in their numbers. This is likely to be due to agricultural intensification, which reduces the number of insects they can feed on, and certain features of our own gardens.

Gardens can provide ideal habitats for hedgehogs; however, they also harbour features that can be devastating for them. When we replace garden fences or walls we often remove small openings that hedgehogs were using to travel between gardens in their territory. Hedgehogs can roam for up to two miles a night to forage for food and if they cannot access a garden which is on their usual route, it limits their ability to find food which may cause them to starve. Other hazards include:

• Entanglement in netting used for beans and peas or over ponds
• Bonfires being started where a hedgehog is hibernating
• Poisoning by garden chemicals used to kill their prey
• Being run over on the road.

How you can help hedgehogs

• Consider cutting a hole in the base of new fence panels to let hedgehogs pass through to next door 
• If you must use netting in the garden make sure it is taught and well secured
• Make sure you fully turn over and check through any piles of leaves and other debris before lighting a bonfire
• Use garden chemicals sparingly
• Use a "beer-trap" (a pot of stale beer sunk in the ground) instead of slug pellets.  It is an equally effective way of killing slugs.  Or, put the slug pellets inside pieces of pipe or under stone slabs where hedgehogs can't get at them. In any case, as an extra precaution, all dead slugs should be regularly removed.