Hedgehog hospital pleads for help to reverse decline

An animal rescue centre has urged nature-loving residents to help hedgehogs to reverse a dramatic decline in their numbers.

Withington Hedgehog Hospital in Manchester is currently caring for more than a hundred adult and baby hedgehogs.

Barbara Roberts, who runs the hospital, said local populations had halved in a decade with loss of habitat, food supply, and road accidents all contributing to their struggle to survive.

Ms Roberts said when she first came to Manchester in 1962 hedgehogs were "prolific" in gardens and people would "hear them huffing and puffing, we don’t hear any of that now".

She called on people to help the spiny nocturnal mammals by leaving a section of their garden unkept and by setting up hibernation boxes and feeding stations.

Hedgehogs were added to the red list of under-threat species in Britain in 2020.

Ms Roberts told BBC Radio Manchester there are now fewer than a million in north-west England and "we need to do much more to help them".

“They are beautiful and they are a gardener’s friend," she said.

"They are fantastic for getting rid of all the insects that you don’t want on your plants like green fly and black fly.

"If we all had a hedgehog we could do away with pesticides because they wouldn’t be necessary."

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