Dear All,

I am sorry for the delay in writing this update - but I have been busy getting the finishing touches to the Beaver Book Launch Lunch! Follow the link if you would like to book a free ticket to the event, 1pm on Thursday 14th October.

But to Dorset ... now some of you may remember the particularly innovative response that the Dorset Mammal Group members took when confronted by lots of road kill hedgehogs - they developed 'Ghost Hedgehogs' to mark the point at which they had been found - white, wooden reminders.

The idea of a Hedgehog Conference had been in the mix for a while - but previous attempts to get it going had been hammered by Covid. However, on 18th September we finally got together - and what an amazing day it was.

I talked about our campaign on here, among other things, and the every wonderful Nigel Reeve talked about the ground breaking study of hedgehogs in Regent's Park, London. There was so much to learn form that - but the most important aspect was ... time ... if they had stopped the work after 3 years, for example, they would have 'known' that hedgehogs do not use the sports fields - and why would they? Heavily used and compacted ... But ... by having the energy to keep the work going, they showed that hedgehogs will use that part of the park. The take home from this is that so many studies are 'snapshots' - and we must invest time, money and energy into long term research.

To be honest, I was not expecting much when it came to talking about the Dorset work - I mean, I know that Susy Varndell is a force of nature but how much could they be getting up to?

Wow ... the answer is really quite a lot!

Here is the website - what we learnt at the conference was how far they had got. I loved the idea of having 'hedgehog friendly towns' within the county - I will steal that idea for Oxfordshire! It is like a development of the amazing Hedgehog Friendly Campus work started by Jo Wilkinson. In Dorset, villages work to help hedgehogs - there is training on offer - guidance for land managers, Hedgehog Street encouragement for residents. And quiet a lot of cake by the looks of it too!

Individuals keep an eye on planning applications so that pressure can be put on both the planners and the developers to at least incorporate hedgehog highways - this approach has been very successful - as you will have seen from posts on here.

I loved how there was a real effort to ensure that community space, such as church yards, are incorporated into the hedgehog plans. This was being done with the Dorset Wildlife Trust.

There is also a county wide campaign to raise funding for a proper wildlife hospital ... they are nothing if not ambitious!

The conference was a great success and much thanks to all the organisers - and in particular the wonderful person who gave me a delicious cake to take home and share with the family!

Coming soon ... today I have been helping judge the Hedgehog Bake Off!! Winner will be announced soon. And there are statisticians busy at work putting together the next State of Britain's Hedgehogs report ... hopefully I will be able to share that with you before too long as well ... it is a really important piece of research done by Hedgehog Street - giving us an idea of how well all of our work is doing at trying to help this wonderful creature. And as I went to get the link to the website I am reminded that in our 10th year of campaigning we have just got our 100,000th champion signed up! That calls for more cake, I reckon ... if only I could go back to my Bake-off competition and get these Nick Cope inspired delights for pudding tonight! That might be a little tangential as a link ... Nick wrote this amazing song - enjoy!