Garden 'makeovers' bad news for hedgehogs

A steep increase in the number of hedgehogs being brought to sanctuaries this summer has been reported by animal volunteers.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/6299758/Gardening-makeovers-blamed-for-rise-in-orphaned-hedgehogs.html

Dr Toni Bunnell said “The problem now is garden makeovers. They’ve been an unprecedented disaster this year. We are getting lots and lots of mothers and babies disturbed by the bulldozers – the mother can make off but the babies have to be rescued.”

“In the past people have maybe put out a few flowers. Now they are having the whole garden demolished. Everything goes – trees, shrubs, the lot.”

Lorraine Jackson, who runs the Hull Animal Welfare Trust’s Hedgehog Hospital, said: “The makeover programmes on television have a lot to answer for.”


Extreme(ly ugly), wildlife-unfriendly 'makeovers', including for swathes of car-parking, deprive hedgehogs and other species of places to live and feed

RHS and Wildlife Trusts team up on WILDLIFE-FRIENDLY gardening

'Make no mistake, important as nature reserves, national parks and the like unarguably are, the ecological crisis facing us today is above all, a battle for hearts and minds and gardens may well end up being in the front line.' Richard Burkmar 2003

With this in mind, no doubt, the Royal Horticultural Society and the Wildlife Trusts have teamed up to produce an expanded website that encourages wildlife-friendly gardening

http://www.wildaboutgardens.org.uk/index.aspx

There is advice on how to improve gardens for wildlife and a 'jobs for the month' section.

The one disappointing feature is the lack of any reference to the huge loss of garden space - especially front garden space - to hard wildlife-unfriendly surfaces, and no explicit encouragement for its users to reverse any of that. The nearest these partners come to such a revolutionary thought is a suggestion that people might lift a patio paving slab or two to make room for mini gravel gardens.

And whilst there is a section on 'design principles' for wildlife-friendly gardening, I would have liked to have seen a call - especially where a garden is reasonably well planted already - for gardeners (whether long term residents, or newly moved into a property) to take the time to properly investigate what already inhabits their garden and neighbouring ones before making drastic changes. Otherwise they might inadvertently displace something relatively uncommon in the process of trying to encourage something fairly ubiquitous.