Calling all hedgehog carers!
12th January 2017
Are you involved in hedgehog rehabilitation? If so, please take part in this survey…
There are around 800 hedgehog rehabilitation centres in Britain, ranging from huge wildlife hospitals that handle hundreds of ‘hogs, to lone individuals taking in one or two.
There is currently no centralised database to capture all of the valuable information that these dedicated volunteers generate. For example, we have no idea how many hedgehogs go into and out of care every year, or for what reasons.
Information on the numbers of hedgehogs going into and out of care could be used as another way of monitoring the state of the population.
This is the first time a large-scale rehabilitator survey has been attempted and success will depend on as many people taking part as possible. Information will be anonymised to protect personal details.
A database would allow some of the garden hazards that we know to be potential threats to hedgehogs to be ranked and quantified. This would allow limited conservation resources to be focused on those issues which are most problematic.
For example, the postie’s elastic bands are a much trumpeted threat, but how many hedgehogs every year succumb to these? Hedgehog carer data would at least show if this is a real threat, or just a perceived one.
