World Wildlife Day

March 3rd is World Wildlife Day, and last week we asked you which animal you thought was Britain’s favourite.

Hedgehog. Photo: George Chernilevsky

The answer is that hedgehogs are the UK's favourite mammal. When the question was put to a public vote in 2016, the humble hedgehog won with 35% of the votes, beating the red fox and red squirel into second and third places.

Henry Johnson, hedgehog officer, People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES) said:

“We Brits seem to love hedgehogs for a whole range of reasons, including their cute appearance, their role as slug controllers and the way they have colonised our gardens with such aplomb. This is why it is so sad to see them decline, with one in three lost since the millennium.”

Sadly, their population is indeed declining, and they are now listed as 'vulnerable' on the UK's red list of mammals. Even rarer is the iconic red squirrel, now restricted to a few small areas of the British Isles. (It's not all bad news for British mammals, though, with growing populations of wild boars and beavers in our forests.)

Threats to hedgehogs come mostly from humanity. Our farms lack diversity of habitats, and the populations of insects that they eat are also falling.

If you want to help hedgehogs, Henry Johnson said:

“The first step is ensuring hedgehogs can access our gardens – this means ‘hedgehog highways’ at the base of fences and walls. Then the gardens themselves can be enhanced through log piles, compost heaps, ponds and nectar-rich plants."