Changing garden trends has seen hedgehog numbers decline 25% over the past 10 years. What can be done to help them?
"Shifting baselines" sounds like a funk band rather than the ecological concept that is making me miserable.
It's official: the British Hedgehog Preservation Society and the People's Trust for Endangered Species have released research that clarifies what we already suspected ? hedgehog numbers are dropping precipitously. They're down 25% in the last 10 years alone.
And this is where that baseline comes into play. The fisheries scientist Daniel Pauly first developed the idea in 1995. He talked about how scientists would assess the state of a fishery using their memories of the fishery at the start of their career as the baseline. But this is a very different baseline than the fishery in an untouched state, or 100 years ago. This results in large declines within ecosystems being masked as each new generation sets new definitions on what is natural.
I do many talks about hedgehogs, often to the Women's Institute, and I have never had an audience that has recently seen more hedgehogs. To begin with I thought this might be to do with a slight rose-tinting of times gone by, but it is too consistent, and the new data adds considerable credence to the observation.
But the talk I hear is not of something in the region of a 25% decline; people are regularly reporting a complete absence of hedgehogs, where once they were plentiful. So going back to the science, I found a figure suggesting the hedgehog population for the UK in 1955 was about 30m. Today it is around 1m, and falling. That is the baseline we need to keep in mind, so that we remain aware that we have already lost in excess of 95% of the country's hedgehogs.
Why should we care?
Well, because hedgehogs are tough little animals that have survived pretty well, in some form or other, for the last 70m years. This decline is big enough that we should be worried. It indicates that something is wrong. And now we also have a pretty clear idea of what that might be.
The landscape, suburban and rural, has become massively fragmented. In the countryside intensive farming, improved pastures and poorly managed hedges have all contributed to the isolation of hedgehogs in what are known as "rural refugia", or more commonly, towns and villages. In many cases the hedgehogs also have a jailor, in the form of badgers, the presence of which prevents their spread out into the wilds.
That has all been going on for some time now, but what is new is what has changed in the last sanctuary for the hedgehog, suburbia. It was perfect. A mosaic of different habitats all interconnected with sufficient green space to allow movement that for the most part kept them away from the busier roads. But the pressures on space have reduced the green routes; the numbers of cars have increased enormously; front gardens have been given over to car ports; rear gardens have become extensions, either literally, or with decking and patios; easily maintained tidiness has become the goal and, finally, fences have got concrete footings.
All this ruins the capacity of suburbia to help the hedgehog. In my talks a regular question will come from a keen wildlife gardener who has done all the right things: she will have a compost heap, a wild border or two, a shallow pond and lots of rotting log piles, but complains that there are no hedgehogs. Why? Because she has an impenetrable garden.
There is a solution at hand, as, in conjunction with the depressing research, a campaign called Hedgehog Street has been launched. The call is going out for people to start to work with their neighbours to ensure that their gardens help, rather than hinder, hedgehogs. Already people have started cutting hedgehog-sized holes in their fences and there are many other simple ideas available through the campaign's website.
Hedgehogs are important; they are an essential and utterly unmistakable connection with the natural world. They remind us that there is wildness beyond the suburbs.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/01/suburbia-hedgehog-decline-garden
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