Last Christmas Jacqueline had a present of a book by Monty Don, the gardening guru. Leafing through it I came across a paragraph on hedgehogs. Monty says that the reason they are in decline is ‘loss of habitat,’ a phrase I’ve heard elsewhere. I find this strange; hedgehogs have completely disappeared from Staunton, yet our habitats have increased enormously over the last thirty years. Farmers now leave field edges unploughed, and the National Forest has planted hundreds of acres with trees.
When I ask local friends who work in the countryside they maintain that hedgehogs have disappeared because the badgers eat them. This also seems strange; badgers and hedgehogs have always coexisted as far as I know. But badger numbers have certainly exploded; we find new setts every year and dead badgers by the roadside instead of squashed hedgehogs.
To resolve the matter I wrote to the Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust, of which I’ve been a member for fifty years. Last week I had a reply from their ‘Communication and Supporter Engagement Assistant.’ He writes at some length, but the upshot is ‘loss of habitat,’ no mention of badgers. I can’t make sense of it – do we have the wrong sort of ‘habitat?’
Strange though this is, it should not cause us any concern, hedgehogs are common enough in towns. Daughter Jayne was telling me yesterday how she came across one on a late night walk in Melbourne, and how quickly it scampered away.