Villagers praised as simple green plan wins national award
People do not need to go the whole hog with big projects to save the environment said Midlands green energy expert Ron Fox.
Small projects can be just as effective as villagers have proved winning a national award to help save the hedgehog from extinction.
Dale Road in Keyworth, Nottinghamshire, has been crowned the winner of Britain’s Biggest Hedgehog Street after drilling 42 holes in their garden fences, walls and hedges, allowing the animals to roam for a mile throughout the neighbourhood in search of food, mates and nesting material.
“Many people do not realise how important these garden favourites are to our environment,” said Ron, of Noreus Ltd on the University of Keele Science Innovation Park.
He said that hedgehogs have a key role in ensuring that there is a diverse, healthy and thriving ecosystem. They do this by controlling the insect population with each hedgehog eating more than 100 flies a night plus slugs, snails, caterpillars, beetles, earthworms, birds’ eggs and carrion.
But there has been a startling decline of 95 per cent in the number of hedgehogs in the UK. Fifty years ago, there were estimated to be 36 million, now it is fewer than a million and declining rapidly.
One in three hedgehogs has been lost in the last three years due to the loss of food and habitat in the countryside, fewer green spaces in urban areas and traffic accidents.
The situation is so serious that they were listed as in danger of extinction on the Red List for Britain’s Mammals in 2020.
The Keyworth residents decided to act by using a street Whatsapp group to tell neighbours about the national competition and there was a flood of replies. They were helped by Wild Things Keyworth, a local wildlife group set up last year, who provided the drills, materials and advice to make the hedgehog highways.
They appointed Super Hedgehog Carers to help build hedgehog boxes, ramps and feeding stations, plus creating more wildlife friendly areas. Local artists and children joined in by decorating the holes to make the fences look improved rather than damaged.
And it worked – residents were delighted at seeing hedgehogs in their gardens for the first time in 30 years.
Many villagers have used night vision wildlife cameras to film the hedgehogs using the new holes and shared the sightings on their Facebook page.
In the past year the group has created 155 hedgehog highways across the village with 42 in Dale Road in the last four months.
This month they were rewarded by winning the Hedgehog Street national award, run jointly by The British Hedgehog Preservation Society and the People’s Trust for Endangered Species.
“It just shows,” said Ron, “how everyone playing a small part in a large group can have a dramatic effect on the countryside, saving our wildlife and helping to make our environment better.”
For more information about to make your local area greener, call Ron on 0845 4746641.
Caption: Hitting the road – Hedgehogs can move around the village of Keyworth after residents created animal highways through their fences. Credit: Wild Things Keyworth
