'Hedgehog highways': campaign group needs Britain's help to make hog-friendly garden fences industry standard

Members of the public are being asked to help get a new hedgehog friendly fencing campaign rolling - in a bid to make garden fencing with ready-made ‘hedgehog highways’ available as industry standard.

Hedgehogs tottering around the garden at dusk are an iconic and treasured sight across British backyards. But native hedgehogs are now listed as vulnerable to extinction on the Red List for Britain’s Mammals 2020, and campaign group Hedgehog Street says numbers have plummeted in recent years - with up to 75% disappearing in some parts of the countryside.

The group - a campaign by charities People’s Trust for Endangered Species and The British Hedgehog Preservation Society - has this week launched its new Hedgehog Friendly Fencing campaign, to counter one of the main issues affecting Britain's hedgehogs.

Hedgehog officer Grace Johnson told NationalWorld many of the critters struggling in rural areas have sought refuge in urban and suburban neighbourhoods - but our walled off yards present a big problem.

"Hedgehogs can travel two kilometres in a single night, and fences prevent hedgehogs from accessing different gardens looking for food, shelter and potential mates, which is essential for their survival," she said. "These solid fences are sadly preventing them getting in."

The charity has drafted a letter available on its website, that it hopes members of the public can send on to their local fencing companies. It asks them to consider offering hedgehog friendly fencing options in their product ranges, like pre-built hedgehog highways - 13cm square gaps in fences connecting gardens and other green spaces.

While Ms Johnson believed the main reason more companies didn't already offer these options was a lack of awareness, help from the public could make an enormous difference in this particular campaign.

"With a lot of corporate companies, they are concerned they will put a product on the market that's not going to sell," she said. If individuals wrote in themselves, it would show "there are all these people that care about hedgehogs".

However, more than 19,000 hedgehog highways had already been registered with the charity from all across the UK, Ms Johnson said, so demand was clearly there. "Look how many people are putting these in themselves?"

In its own research, Hedgehog Street has discovered one of the top reasons people were not installing hedgehog highways in their own backyards was that they didn't have the right tools or equipment to do it themselves.

Writing a letter or approaching a fencing company is one way hedgehog-lovers can help, even those who did not have their own backyard, or the means to built a hedgehog highway themselves.

"What we'd like to see is hedgehog highways to become the industry standard... When people [are] shopping for fences - these would be offered as standard."

Ms Johnson continued: "We'd like for ideally all companies to be offering these, or at least most."