Heather, Species Spotlight, March 26
When planning a development project, whether it is small or large, rural or urban, there’s a good chance that your site is visited by hedgehogs. The small prickly mammals are a popular species, native to the UK and found throughout western Europe.
The issue
Once a common night-time visitor, the species has seen population levels decimated by up to 75% in the last 25 years. Now classed as ‘vulnerable to extinction’, two of the key drivers behind this sudden population decline are habitat loss and habitat fragmentation.
Habitat loss: Foraging, nesting and commuting habitat has been removed or negatively impacted through things like development and widespread changes in how land is used and managed. This includes seemingly small changes, such the rising popularity of neat and ‘low maintenance’ gardens, to large scale changes such as long-term use of pesticides across farmland. Many of these changes have accelerated rapidly, causing sudden and significant habitat losses.
Fragmentation: Where good nesting habitat remains, access to it can be cut off by obstacles like busy roads and sprawling developed estates. Habitat fragmentation not only prevents hedgehogs from foraging freely, but it also puts them at risk of injury or fatality and exposes them to predation. In extreme cases of habitat fragmentation, isolated groups are left with a reduced breeding gene pool; this can result in that local population becoming far more susceptible to losing entire generations to disease.
What you can do
! A clear ecological understanding of the habitat, local population and potential suitability at the site is required. This will enable the correct identification of potential impacts and risks of the development and works.
✓ Get your ecologist involved as early as possible. In most cases, by gaining full insight early on, this provides the opportunity to avoid or greatly reduce impacts and severity of risks and put any required actions into place well in advance. Any necessary actions can be planned into the development timelines to prevent unforeseen delays.
! The solitary creatures can explore up to 2km each night in search of food and mates. They are not territorial and the range can spread in any direction. Hedgehogs are known to follow linear features when foraging, such as walls, hedges and fencelines.
✓ Plan your development layout so that hedgehogs can travel across the site between any new obstacles. For instance, if fencing or walls are being installed at multiple points, ensure that enough holes or gaps are made so that a ‘hedgehog highway’ can be followed across the entire site without reaching dead ends. Better still, use hedges instead of fences for boundaries wherever possible – this approach is widely utilised across Scandinavian countries and hedge boundaries reportedly have significant benefits for residents as well as wildlife.
! Your ecologist will identify any present hedgehog populations and suitable habitat which could be impacted by your development. For instance, this could include habitats for commuting, foraging and overwintering which are lost or will be affected by things such as disturbance.
✓ Recommendations bespoke to your development would be made to avoid or reduce impact where possible. If a risk or negative impact is posed, your ecologist would identify appropriate mitigation and compensation actions which can be included with your development proposals to help protect the local hedgehog populations from further decline.
Reversing declines nationwide
With such well documented losses, new strategies have been welcomed with the aim to halt and reverse the decline of hedgehogs in the UK. The People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES) and The British Hedgehog Preservation Society (BHPS) have led co-ordinated efforts of over 30 organisations to create the UK’s first National Hedgehog Conservation Strategy. It identifies key threats to provide a framework for implementing local, regional and national efforts to bring back the hedgehog population from the brink. As part of the wider campaigns, Hedgehog Street have also created a free guide for developers.
Contact us to find out more about the survey assessments and reports we can provide to ensure that your development does not contribute to the risks faced by our remaining hedgehog populations.