Sorry to bombard you this week but some news has broken just now that is so important that I wanted to share it with you ... Taylor Wimpey have signed up to Hedgehog Street and are committing that all their new Hedgehog Highways will come with houses for people as well ... 

Or was it the other way around? Either way, this is great news for hedgehogs.

So - the purpose of this petition is to get government to change the law to ensure new housing developments come with hedgehog highways built in ... and we have had some major (but not complete) success with this. 

I am waiting on both 'the million' and also government to calm a little from covid to re-approach to try and get the guidance some teeth.

In the meantime I am being delighted by the responses many of you are getting when you are approaching local developments, and asking them to go with hedgehog highways. 

But it would be so much easier if the developers took responsibility - built in hedgehog highways because it was the right thing to do! So when Bovis (now part of the Vestry Group) became the first major developers to make such a commitment, I really hoped others would follow ... and they have! So - hats off to Taylor Wimpey!

However, this is just the first step in a much broader campaign. Until the hedgehog gets shifted from Schedule 6, to Schedule 5, of the Wildlife and Countryside Act, the obligations on developers to check for and remove hedgehogs from a site slated for development are zero. And what point a developer claiming hedgehog brownie points for their highways, if they have killed all the resident hedgehogs in the first place. 

So now is a time to ask developers to start treating hedgehogs as if they were on Schedule 5 - to make sure that they are removed before the diggers roll in ... then the developers can avoid accusations of greenwash. 

Given the amazing responses so far, I think we might win this one too! 

And THANK YOU - ALL - for the support you give this campaign. If you had not signed, in such numbers, we would not have got this far. 

Next week is Hedgehog Awareness Week - there will be another update! And I will be appearing with Robin Ince and Helen Czerski on Science Shambles, live at 3pm on Sunday 2nd May - and because you can't get enough of me (!!!) I will simultaneously be broadcast by Mike from Hedgehog's Hollow (fortunately pre-recorded!)

And as ever please share the petition to everyone you know!!!