Wednesday 19 July 2017

Hedgehogs at risk from food scarcity, habitat loss and badgers


Experts say hedgehogs face crisis in towns and countryside, as RSPB records fewer sightings of the animals for third year in a row
  

Friday 7 July 2017 18.10 BST First published on Friday 7 July 2017 16.36 BST

During the day they curl up in nests of shredded paper but when night falls those that are well enough scurry and snuffle around the old fish boxes that serve as their temporary homes.

These hedgehogs at the RSPCA’s West Hatch animal centre in Somerset have had a tough time of it. Some have tangled with dogs, strimmers, bonfires, fruit netting or vehicles; others have been brought in as tiny unseeing hoglets, having lost their parents.

The hedgehogs, which arrive here from as far afield as south Wales and Cornwall, will be nursed back to health by vets and animal carers, and released either close to where they were found or into a hog-friendly piece of West Country countryside.

They are – relatively speaking – the lucky ones. Figures out this week show a deeply worrying wider trend.

In the RSPB’s annual garden watch survey, hedgehogs were spotted in fewer gardens for the third consecutive year. One quarter of the 139,000 gardens surveyed did not record a single sighting in the whole of 2016.


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