In the 1980s my Father’s fortunes improved somewhat and we made the move from our crowded ‘two up two down’ terrace house in Edmonton out to the leafy suburbs of Enfield, North London.
I can well remember that first night in our new home being awoken by a strange grunting, squealing noise that rose up from the front garden. The noise was like no other I’d ever heard before and sent me rushing into my parent’s room to warn them of a possible intruder.
My father listened behind the curtain to the strange sound and then peered out and down. Initially he thought there was a courting couple ‘making out’ on our neatly trimmed lawn but the night was far too dark to make out exactly who was making the unearthly noise below so he grabbed a torch and with some trepidation I followed him down the stairs and outside. Quietly he unbolted the door and then, quick as a flash, he snapped on the torch. The pool of light didn’t illuminate a young couple’s illicit tryst (I’m sure much to Dad’s disappointment) but it did, however, reveal the source of the sexual sounding cacophony – an amorous pair of hedgehogs!
That was my first introduction to the species and we soon discovered that hedgehogs seemed to be everywhere in the neighbourhood – in fact they were very much part of mine (and I’d imagine many others’) 70s/80s childhood.
From the school programmes that featured a pair of cartoon hedgehogs teaching us how to cross the roads in safety to the all-too real aftermath of what would happen if we didn’t pay enough attention while doing so, the hedgehog gave us a valuable lesson in life and death. This was especially evident with the many sad, little, squashed corpses that littered the roads – the unfortunate victims of a speeding Austin Princess or Allegro.
So, it was particularly shocking to discover the terrifying statistic that hedgehog numbers have crashed from 36 million in 1950 down to a paltry 1 million today and even more worrying for me was seeing ‘experts’ leap upon this freefall in numbers and smugly attributing it to ‘climate change.’
Yes, our climate is changing. Climate has always done so and the jury is still out whether this recent change is driven by man or a natural cycle of events. After all this country has experienced similar events before during what has been dubbed ‘the little ice age’ we suffered some very cold periods; one beginning in 1650, another starting around 1770 and the last in 1850. All of these cold periods were separated by periods of intense warming and, funnily enough, our tough, spiky friends survived all these times of tumultuous change.
One thing that is undeniable however is the horrific crash in hedgehog numbers that is being driven by man’s activities and all talk of ‘climate change’ could be a dangerous smoke screen and a convenient excuse for our government to do nothing tangible to tackle the real problem and help reverse the downward spiral in our hedgehog population.
For, surely, the cause of such a catastrophic decline (a cause shared by a number of our iconic species) lies not in ‘climate change’ but in the grubbing up of 118,000 miles of hedgerow (which, like the decline in hedgehog numbers, has occurred since the 1950s), the overpopulation of our island (something very few PC naturalists are brave enough to bring up or tackle), the consequent eating up of land and open space for yet more houses, roads and railways and the smothering of acres more land under concrete and tarmac to provide ‘essential’ car parking and shopping malls.
The homes being thrown up on our once ‘green and pleasant’ land do not resemble the spacious 1930s semi-detached home I moved into as a child with its lawned and flower filled front garden and its tree-lined large rear garden. Sadly, the mantra in house building today seems to be ‘how to squash the most number of dwellings onto the smallest possible plot’.
Gardens (if they are provided at all) are postage stamp sized and often surrounded by an impenetrable fence. The lawn is now deemed ‘too much hard work’ (although judging by our populations ever growing waistlines getting out and mowing the lawn once a week could be a valuable form of free exercise) and it is often the first casualty, quickly being covered over with ‘time saving’ decking or paving.
No longer can one walk through the streets of most towns and suburbs and admire the front garden plantings of roses, delphiniums and hollyhocks. The main dominating feature of most front gardens nowadays is usually a shiny Golf, Fiesta or Astra standing on a solid bed of concrete or thick black tarmac.
Those who are fortunate enough to own and maintain a decent sized plot are also prone to the ‘quick fix’ attitude that seems to pervade modern life, falling for the adverts that continually bombard us in summer proclaiming “Banish this weed”’ or “Kill this weed at the root”. Little thought seems to be given to where these chemicals could possibly be going although, one would imagine, they are going into the soil. And, what is one of the favourite foods of our humble hedgehog? Yes – earthworms.
Their other favourite happens to be slugs and, once again, we find a vast market offering slug pellets with many combating these slimy pests by liberally spreading these pellets around their tender plants such as hostas.
Surprisingly, given the over-proliferation of wildlife charities, there doesn’t appear to have been much research into the effects of bio-accumulation in the hedgehog.
We all need to pay attention to the hedgehog’s decline. The species is an important environmental barometer and it is telling us that something is very, very wrong in Britain today. I do not believe ‘climate change’ is the reason that is nudging this little creature ever closer towards extinction in these isles. No, once again, it is mankind’s selfish actions that are the main cause and what is so frustrating is, if we all adopted just some of the small changes (such as those advised by the excellent Hedgehog Society), we could so easily turn around the fortunes of this much loved animal and maybe, in turn, halt the decline of other worm/slug/lawn dependent species such as the bumblebee, song thrush and starling.
Action is needed NOW. Covering the countryside with wind farms and other ‘climate change’ busting ideas won’t help the hedgehog. We all need to take notice and learn from the plight of Mrs Tiggywinkle for failure to do so could have serious consequences for us all.
Lee Connor 
You truly are a man after my own heart 🙂 I share many of your views. I’ve brought up our population numbers, a few times in various places, recently with farmers, they clam up, don’t want to know, so just don’t reply. I’ve always thought there could be sensible reasonable ways to control our numbers without taking any of our freedoms away. And there is one or two, but not something to bring up here in relation to this article 🙂 I’ve heard it said, a lot lately by farmers that the decline in our hedgehog population is down to the badgers. Can you believe it! They rip out the hedges, use pesticides or smaller concerns, slug pellets. These are known to kill hedgehogs, they can kill badgers, so what chance does a hedgehog have. I am an organic gardener, and I mean organic, in fact probably to organic, for organic gardening. I don’t use weed killers, pesticides ect, there is many natural remedies, that can be made up, using mostly wild flowers, even nettles. Comfrey is a good all rounder to start with Bees love it, its a fantastic fertiliser also accelerates decomposition of compost and a wonderful natural remedy, which can be used, mostly topically, its old nic name is ‘knit bone’ and people used to wrap banadges soaked in comfrey oil or infusion, to place over fractures, it accelerated the healing for fractures, hence the name ‘knit bone’.
Without a doubt, its hard work, doing things my way and sometimes it can be too much, but usually, if I decide for quickness sake to use, for example, the petrol strimmer on the banks in the drive, I regret it after. It usually means i’ve unintentionally killed something, the last victim was a slow worm 😦 and I was gutted and hated my self, why didn’t I just use the ‘bill hook’ like I normally do, it never happens, when I use that. And in fact, it doesn’t really take that much longer, you don’t kill anything, and you don’t have to listen to that high pitched whine!! However, thats all well and good, if working on your own property, but if you work for someone else, they might like the word organic, but that’s as far as it goes, they do not want to pay you for longer than necessary. And my prefered way of working, does take longer without a doubt! So I am a poor, too organic for organic gardening, gardener 😉 Recently, permaculture principals could become a reality for me, I am now wondering why am i constantly trying to get rid of certain weeds, either by pulling up or hoeing, why am I fighting them, I’ll never win and actually, perhaps they don’t look that bad after all and could be keeping, not so nice looking more persistent weeds at bay. I don’t think my customers will buy this though:)
It sends a chill down by spine when I hear, that plots will be tarmacd over, so a car can be parked there. I live on a 3.5 acre property, beautiful, and do the garden in exchange for living here, perfect situation for me and the lovely lady who owns the land adores her wildlife, all of it as I do, we have got an amazing selection of birds, inc semi resident Heron, buzzard, tawny owls, partner is convinced he has seen an eagle owl in the woods, badgers foxes, several stray cats, rats, mice shrews, newts even brown trout in the river. A manicured garden, with sharp edges, very geometric does not attract wildlife, some wildflowers, some may call weeds, need to be kept, if you wish to have bees, butterflies ect. We have honey bees nest in our roof every year, its a privilege to us, so why do some people, have them killed, so they maybe removed, tragic. Again, Bumblebees, when you see them on their last legs, moving so slowly amongst the blades of grass, there is no greater joy, than to pick her up and find the nearest pollen filled flower or get some sugary water, stand back and watch her come back to life, its amazing to see, and I never get bored of it! I think I have got carried away here, but feel its still relevant to your article, just expanded on 🙂 x
LikeLike
Carla, have you thought about blogging yourself? I love what you write and I couldn’t agree more! I haven’t had a chance to look yet but I will try to work out how to add in those videos you suggested as I think that’ll be a great visual addition to the blog. Lee 🙂
LikeLike
‘Covering the countryside with wind farms and other ‘climate change’ busting ideas won’t help the hedgehog.’ Am I to understand from this [and a previous comment about ‘trendy issues like climate change’ that you doubt the importance and urgency of climate change? Are you yet another rural nimby who can’t see the climate changing for hedgehogs? Remember, they too are vulnerable to all the changes global warming is causing and will continue to cause, they can drown too. I am also concerned about hedgehogs, badgers, foxes and all other occupants of the ecosystem, but I’m old enough to remember when the sun didn’t burn your skin even in winter, when seasons came at the same time [give or take a week] every year, when ‘o0ur’ native species of plants and animals weren’t migrating north as warming advanced, when fish species, highly sensitive to temperature, weren’t similarly moving north, when once in a hundred years weather events weren’t happening all the time, when droughts or devastating floods weren’t becoming the norm around the world.
It’s ok concentrating on small things, and they do need our help in the face of agrofarming, but do keep an eye on the big picture or you won’t have a future either.
LikeLike
I’m not disagreeing with you on climate change; the world’s climate is definitely changing however what I don’t like is the constant insistance that EVERYTHING is down to climate change. As I said in the piece, hedgehogs came through the ‘little ice age’ and their decline was noted in 1982 long before climate change became such a buzz word. This species decline is down to the over use of pesticides (in gardens and in farmland) and hedgerow destruction – man’s greed as usual. The overuse of chemical farming (with its effects on insects, birds, etc) could well bring about our demise just as easily as climate change and the pro badger cull lobby are now saying hedgehog numbers drastic fall is due to…badgers.
You couldnt make it up!
All the best..
LikeLike