Putting a hedgehog on a bank note when you don’t know how valuable they truly are …
West European Hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus) Decline in Great Britain: Evidence from Multiple National-Scale Surveys.
On the very day we hear that the Bank of England has chosen (thanks to your hard efforts!!) the hedgehog to be on one of the new design of banknotes, a new scientific paper has been published in the journal Ecology and Evolution which outlines the best analysis yet of how the hedgehog population is changing.
Please pop over to the Substack version for a chance to comment.
The title is a bit of a plot spoiler - and is probably not a great surprise to you. Actually, it would be interesting to know whether you are seeing more hedgehogs now than you did when you were younger … so … not just in the last few years when you have been putting effort into getting hedgehogs into your garden with highways, hotels, food, and water … but casting your mind back to childhood maybe.
The paper collates and analyses the data from five different surveys. Each survey has its own problems - this is a nocturnal animal, so harder to note sightings of - especially in rural landscapes. And in suburbia, the people most likely to be surveying for hedgehogs are the ones who already really care and have made efforts to encourage them, and may already have seen them where they end up doing their studies.
But when clever people get hold of data, they can unpick the variables and begin to draw out conclusions.
Lets start with the bad news from the three rural surveys. Analysis of two show a decline in abundance of 70.7% between 1981 and 2023, and 54.4% between 2002 and 2013. A third survey, measuring occurrence, showed a decline of 80.4% between 2002 and 2023.
The two surveys that focussed on predominantly urban areas reveal moderate increases in abundance - but differing trends in occurrence. There are some interesting ideas as to why these seemingly contradictory results maybe happening - possibly due to increased use of trail cameras in areas where hedgehogs are already known to be, inflating the number of hedgehogs seen.
These data reinforce the placement of hedgehogs on the Red List as a species Vulnerable to Extinction in Britain. I am very heartened that there is a far more robust survey technique being developed by some more very clever people - I have written about the National Hedgehog Monitoring Programme before and it is a wonderful opportunity for YOU to get involved too … just follow THIS LINK (and if you watch the explanatory video, you will get to hear my dulcet tones!)
The hedgehog news today has left me with a mixed set of emotions. Yes, we have shown that there is a nationwide love for the animal. But, we have also seen that, despite this love, there has been a very dramatic collapse in numbers.
We are getting excited at the idea of having a hedgehog on a banknote while still clearly not understanding their true value - because if we did understand their true value we would surely not be letting them slip away.
Talking with Eva and Emily on Wednesday, the two amazing young people who have launched Wild Pets, really drove home how much damage to nature has been caused by the greedy and careless - how adults have let ecological collapse happen on our watch - and here we have kids not hanging around and waiting for us to clear up the mess … but taking action.