The Hedgehog Highways Project
Why do we need hedgehog highways?
Hedgehogs travel miles every night visiting lots of different gardens searching for ground-dwelling invertebrates such as worms, beetles, slugs, caterpillars, millipedes and earwigs. The last 20 years, however, has seen around a third of Britain’s hedgehogs disappear. The main causes are pesticides, road deaths and a lack of connectivity between gardens, which reduces their range and forces them onto roads.
Hedgehog Highway v2.mp4How can you help?
To keep our Blackawton hedgehogs safe, and our gardens pest free in the process, we need to reduce the use of garden pesticides and help them travel through our gardens - all they need is a CD case size hole in the fence or wall between us and our neighbours.
If you are able to open a hedgehog highway, or there is already a route for them to travel in and out of your garden, then please let us know and we’ll be one step closer to keeping our Blackawton hedgehogs safe and our gardens pest free.
Thanks to Vivienne from Kingsbridge for the use of the hedgehog footage in the video.
How to add your garden
On a PC or Mac (unfortunately can't edit GoogleMyMaps on a phone) click on the button below, sign in to Google, click 'edit' if visible and drop a pin on your patch. It should appear as a hedgehog's face. Please label with a reference name. Email us on hedgehoghighway103@gmail.com quoting the reference name you have chosen to keep your details secure so we can contact you to clarify any points when we transfer the information to the Blackawton Map below.
Below is our first Hedgehog Highway map, recording the hedgehog friendly gardens in Blackawton in green. We hope to have a map eventually for every village in the South Hams in a bid to help conserve these hard-pressed creatures. As more gardens are added the maps will be updated.
Blackawton Hedgehog Highway Map - last updated 23/03/2024
