Road signs and tagging hedgehogs!

busy return from short break!

I have been away for a few days at a festival - the wonderful Green Gathering. I was helping film in the Speakers Forum - and also contributing a talk about my latest book, Cull of the Wild.

Then it was back for birthday fun on Wednesday and now … everything is back into hedgehog busyness … Friday morning I will be recorded by Channel 5 news talking about the wonderful development from the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames - where, in the Old Malden Ward, councillor Mike Massimi has managed to get the near-mythical hedgehog road signs erected!

I have had mixed feelings about these road signs. They were first pushed a few years ago by Chris Grayling but there was complete confusion as the Department for Transport had in mind that they were to alert drivers of the risk to accidents caused by swerving to avoid small mammals. It was not about protecting the animals, but the drivers!

Additionally no one seemed to know who was responsible, leading councils to call DfT and then find DfT sending the requests back to the councils!

Now the rules have changed and councils can put them in place without the DfT being involved.

Why should this be important?

Well, we know that one of the greatest threats to hedgehogs is habitat fragmentation - the chopping up of their habitat into smaller and smaller pieces. This is why the campaign for hedgehog highways is so important - to enable hedgehogs to be able to move between gardens without going out onto roads, and thereby reducing the chances of them being run over.

These signs will, hopefully, increase awareness - and maybe, just maybe encourage some drivers to take more care … and in so doing avoid killing hedgehogs. And, of course, all the other life, human and nonhuman that gets so carelessly destroyed in the name of car-supremacy.

So this is a good thing. Maybe it is time for people who have seen hedgehog roadkill hotspots to approach their council and ask that something similar be done in their area? I would like this to be done in conjunction with more extensive 20mph zone as well - much easier to avoid casualties when travelling slower.  

In other hedgehog news, Natural England have stepped in to clear up a row that erupted on social media when a hedgehog rescue misunderstood the laws around tagging hedgehogs. The confused rescue started, rather aggressively, to claim that people putting small coloured tubes onto the spines of hedgehogs, as a way of identifying ones in care, were in some way breaking the law and endangering hedgehogs.

Tagging hedgehogs like this can be really valuable - allowing an eye to be kept on how individuals are coping with life in the wild. But it should only be done by people experienced in handling and caring for hedgehogs. 

Back to the festival I mentioned at the start - I was camping with my old friends from the band Seize the Day - I first met Theo from the band in 1992 while at the protest camp on Twyford Down. Their music is amazing - songs that are filled with so much emotion and targeting so many of the environmental and social justice issues.

Theo, along with his wife Shannon and daughter Rosa, have also just done something quite remarkable … gone to Australia for a family wedding - overland!! Have a read of their adventures here!