Dear All,

I hope you managed a calm and germ free Christmas and New Year and that your stockings over-flowed with hedgehogs (not real ones, of course ... books, toys, trinkets and cards!)

This year is going to be busy. I have a mission to get this petition in front of the current Secretary of State, Michael Gove. But we also have to consider whether we need to bother with government at all ... having seen how effective you have been at lobbying developers as they pop up around your patch - and getting them to take the steps to help hedgehogs without a change in the law ... well, it does make you wonder. For now, though, I will pursue both avenues - we will pursue them, because without you, not a lot will happen!

In other hedgehog news ... and I really do have a news channel dedicated to all things hedgehog, thanks to Google Alerts, I am delighted to see the vast amounts of reference to Sonic the Hedgehog being displaced by something scientific. However, it is science that some could take the wrong way, so I will explain ...

One of my colleagues, the amazing Sophie Lund-Rasmussen, who has recently moved to Oxford from Denmark, has been involved with a study looking at the 'superbug' MRSA - a variety of the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus that has developed resistance to the antibiotic methicillin. MRSA can be a problem, especially in hospitals. 

So why does this involve hedgehogs? Well Sophie found that samples taken from the skin of hedgehogs had MRSA - and the question has to be where did it come from? Was this a 'spill' from hospitals? Or has MRSA emerged naturally in the wild as well as in conditions where lots of antibiotics are in use? 

It turns out that the scientists were able to identify the fact that MRSA has been around for at least 200 years, so long before the arrival of antibiotics. This does not absolve our massive use, however. There are enormous risks connected with the staggering amount of antibiotic used in the industrial production of meat, for example. The worry is that the continual exposure to the drugs that could help us will encourage resistance to flourish. Our delight (well not mine!) in cheap meat is going to destroy the life-saving properties of loads of readily available drugs. In the USA it was found that around 65% of all antibiotics produced are for the production of cheap meat.

The science behind the discovery is really interesting. The researchers believe that antibiotic resistance evolved in Staphylococcus aureus as an adaptation to having to exist side-by-side on the skin of hedgehogs with the fungus Trichophyton erinacei, which produces its own antibiotics.

So what does this mean for us and hedgehogs? Utterly diddly-squat. We have no need to worry about this, and if any of the less-reputable press start publishing scare stories, please let me know! It is pointing out that nature evolves. We will not get MRSA from our hedgehogs! But we will lose the effectiveness of our antibiotics if we do not take care about how they are used out in the fields!

I hope that has put your mind at rest! Now, I need to think about how to persuade Gove - and we all need to look at our fences and walls around our gardens or around the open spaces we use - and think how and where to make holes! As photo shows, an angry hedgehog and a large catapult are all you need!

p.s. - updates might be a little less frequent for a few months - I have to write a book about Water Voles and have also been commissioned by Bloomsbury to write something rather different ... more news to follow!