Clearly this will be foremost in your mind as you enter the booth on Thursday … which vote will best help the hedgehogs!!

If you want to shout at me - or offer support - check the Substack edition of this update.

I imagine that many of you will be struggling with your conscience as voting begins … quite rightly most people seem to be keen for a change. The party in power over the last 14 years has, in my opinion, done very little to help hedgehogs.

I have run this petition with a view to getting substantive changes to planning law. The closest we got was near the beginning when the late James Brokenshire called for changes in the guidance notes in the National Planning Policy Framework.

This was a great moment for me, but just for a moment - until it dawned on me that the guidance came with no teeth.

This does not mean it is useless, there are local planning authorities who have started to use it to try and get commitments from developers to install hedgehog highways. And that is where we need to keep on them - to chase planning applications back to the authorities and demand action is taken.

Oh - there was THE speech - back in 2015 I think it was when Rory Stewart gave this now famous and brilliantly erudite presentation.

It has been rated as one of the best speeches of recent years in parliament - and who am I to disagree, when it is in large part based on a 45 minute interview he did of me the evening before! I also receive my one and only mention in Hansard thanks to this … it is 13 minutes of your life well spent!

But what else? Well, there has been no particular progress towards a better environment. Traffic increases, industrial agriculture shows no signs of moving towards a more organic and plant basis. There is a continued belief in the fairytale of perpetual growth on a finite planet. And the global climate catastrophe is only exceeded by the crashing loss of biodiversity and bioabundance planet wide.

Could we expect better from Reform UK?

Of course, that was a joke - that is a party which does not even believe in climate change as an issue.

Labour? Well - they will, in all likelihood, win - but to hold much hope for hedgehog-kind might be a stretch. Though I did meet Steve Reed who said some sensible things at a meeting I attended. And my local labour candidate - Anneliese Dodds does genuinely care about hedgehogs - she came to a hedgehog event I was involved with.

Lib Dems? Some sense of an awareness that the current system is unsustainable and that change is needed - but no real sense of radicalism - and no chance of gaining power.

I am not looking at the fringe parties or the others from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. If you would like to have a read of some clear wildlife-centred critique of all the manifestos, go to Wild Justice.

That leaves the Greens. I know they won’t win the general election. I did one of those online ‘which party are you most aligned with’ quizzes online and the only one I was close to was the Green Party. In fact I was even more extreme (according to the quiz!) 

So why am I going to vote Green?

There is some lovely chalk work being done in my local park. The message from Tipping Point is simple - Vote With Your Heart.

But - and here is where my heart is beaten by my head - if I was in a seat where there was a chance of removing a Tory and replacing them with either Labour or Lib Dem, I would hold my nose and vote accordingly. If that is how you feel, this website will help guide your choices.

I do not believe we will get any great environmental change (for the good) out of Labour as they are now - but I hope - so much, that if there are a few Green MPs - and failing that, a persistent voice speaking up for nature from us - that we can encourage the new government to take the very life of the planet a little more seriously than they do now.

So please - vote with both your heart and your head - and then - whoever is in power - make them listen. It is not just hedgehogs that need our help, after all.