15,780 New Homes — Where Will the Hedgehogs Go?

🦔 PETITION UPDATE: 15,780 NEW HOMES — BUT WHAT HAPPENS TO THE HEDGEHOGS ALREADY THERE?

DEFRA has announced plans that could enable up to 15,780 new homes across Norfolk through the first Environmental Delivery Plan under its new Nature Restoration Fund.

The idea is that developers pay a Nature Restoration Levy, with Natural England pooling the money for larger projects such as restoring rivers, creating wetlands and managing fens and reedbeds.

Restoring nature on a large scale could be enormously valuable. But restoration elsewhere must never become permission to destroy what wildlife already has.

For a hedgehog, that ordinary-looking hedgerow isn’t just a hedge. It’s a highway.

That patch of scrub isn’t wasted land. It’s shelter.

Those connected gardens aren’t just green spaces. They’re feeding grounds, nesting habitat and a route through an increasingly fragmented landscape.

When these places disappear beneath roads, concrete and housing, creating habitat miles away does not give them back to the hedgehogs that depended on them.

We cannot restore nature by destroying it in one place and promising to improve it somewhere else.

Local wildlife needs local protection. Development must retain appropriate mitigation, protect valuable existing habitats and maintain the corridors that allow hedgehogs and other wildlife to move safely through our communities.

And right now we have an opportunity to say so.

📢 Natural England has opened a 28-working-day public consultation on the Norfolk plan. The proposals can be scrutinised before the final Environmental Delivery Plan is submitted to the Environment Secretary.

Read the Government announcement and information about the consultation⁠ https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-unveils-plans-to-unlock-over-15000-new-homes

The headline cannot simply be 15,780 homes unlocked.

The measure of success must also be the wildlife that survives and thrives alongside them: living hedgerows, connected habitats, healthy rivers—and hedgehogs still able to move through the landscapes they have inhabited for generations.

And while DEFRA talks about restoring nature, hedgehogs are still waiting for the stronger legal protection we’re asking the Government to give them under Schedule 5 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.

🦔 Please sign and share our petition.

Protect Britain's Hedgehogs — sign the petition 🦔⁠https://www.change.org/HedgehogPetition

Build the homes we need. Restore nature. But protect the wildlife that’s already there.

Hedgehogs cannot wait for us to realise what we’ve lost.