Yes. Although it may have been Chris Packham, that bastion of fact and level headed ness, who said it I live semi rural and can’t remember ever seeing one. I used to live in large town and saw loads and loads. Same as foxes.
Plenty of the little bastards over here, they are a noxious pest in NZ, come over and take all the little pricks back with you, while you're at it take your f*cken Rabbits and Gorse with you too!
I live out of the main town and alongside two fairly large woods, so we do get a fair bit of wildlife in and on the garden. I used to have hedgehogs coming in, but not even seen one for maybe 20 years now. Interestingly, I have not had any foxes in the garden for a couple of years now either ... maybe the factors are connected? or maybe not
I wonder if city life has a bigger appeal. Ample access to food for starters. Like living above a free takeaway
Like most creatures in the natural world they are sadly forced to constantly change how they survive. Look at most housing estates these days compared to 20 years ago. These days everybody has dug up the front garden and turned them into concrete driveways whereby removing large parts of places creatures lived when there was bushes and hedgerow before.
plenty hedgehogs around here. going by the amount of squished ones on the road anyhoo. i've also seen lots of badgers recently, something i havent seen before. it seems the wildlife has come back a fair bit since lock down. here is a stag that was spotted in the midle of kinlochleven, if you look closely you can just see a Zebra crossing just up the road too.
Ok so couple years ago and I only chose England as it’s the most urbanised part of the U.K. c6% of the uK is built on, meaning there is plenty of countryside for the hogs https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/land-cover-atlas-uk-1.744440
In lock-down #1 I encountered a deer in Ledbury on one of the housing estates, not something I've seen before in town. Having moved to Cheltenham recently I frequently see foxes when walking the dogs, more than I did when I lived in rural Herefordshire. Some of these urban foxes are pretty brave and will just sit there and watch the dogs and I walk past 15-20 or so feet away.
Hmmm.... If there were 30million in 1950, and if there are 1million left; if they are common in the north east the Geordies have done a better job of looking after them than the rest of us!
Maybe! I am not denying less hgs. But, I never noticed a declinein our area. just always had lots of hedgehogs in our gardens back ‘home’. In fact my inlaws have a wildlife camera set up in the garden for hedgehog porn...please dont ask! I am related now...lets just say plenty hedgehog activity.!
By all means, return all the land to us Maori ,( I am part Ngai Tahu ), then we can charge all the Uk descendants rent to live here . ( However we will give the Scottish descendants a discount as they are notoriously tight, plus I have Scottish ancestry as well.)
The only mammal that routinely predates hedgehogs is the badger. They are the only creature with claws long enough to unroll the ball. They pull the balled hedgehog open, stand on each end and tear open the belly. Cats and dogs can't do that, at least not with adult hedgehogs. Badgers, whose numbers in the UK have doubled in the last twenty years, kill a significant number of hedgehogs. They're not solely responsible for hedgehog decline but they are a significant factor. The biggest cause is roadkill. Kerbs possibly don't help, but mainly it's the sheer volume of traffic on the road, the development of the countryside, and villages becoming part of the commuter belt which has put large volumes of traffic onto rural roads at dawn and dusk. 51% of hedgehog deaths are attributed specifically to road kill. Human interference in general kills many more That means habitat loss through urbanisation, over-manicured gardens and public spaces and direct disturbance from footfall. A big problem is dog walkers letting their animals run off the lead. Dogs aren't likely to kill hedgehogs but when they're running free in winter they can find them and rouse them from hibernation with disastrous consequences. This incidentally, is also a huge problem with adders, one of the UK's most endangered native species. Their hibernation sites are ancestral and if disturbed by dogs they will abandon them. Winter survival and breeding rate then plummets. All these things combined are driving hedgehogs (and adders) to extinction. Essentially, there are too many human beings with their constant intrusion into wild habitat, their concrete footprint, their marauding pets and their motor vehicles to leave the space and the peace for wild creatures to survive.