Hedgehog Highways petition nearing 1 million signatures!

A petition on change.org calling on the Housing and Planning Minister to make the integration of hedgehog highways compulsory in all new build housing developments is heading for a million signatures.

It is estimated that the UK’s hedgehog population has declined from more than 30 million in the 1950s to just one million today. It has therefore been added to the Red List of Britain’s Mammals, an inventory of at-risk species compiled by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), as ‘vulnerable to extinction’.

The new petition, which was set up by writer and ecologist, Hugh Warwick, calls upon Housing Minister, Robert Jenrick, to help acknowledge and arrest this startling trend by ensuring that all new build housing developments include a hedgehog highway, connecting gardens and creating the pathways hedgehogs need to survive.

Hugh Warwick, Ecologist, Author and Communications Officer for the British Hedgehog Preservation Society (BHPS), said: “Hedgehogs in the UK are in serious trouble. Repeated studies have shown that the nation’s favourite animal is being wiped out. But there is something we can do to save them.

“We need to make sure new housing developments include ‘hedgehog highways’ – a 13cm hole in the bottom of a fence that allows hedgehogs to move freely between gardens to find food and find a mate.”

To add your name to the petition, please click here.