Kirtlington Hedgehog Street is connecting gardens in the village to give hedgehogs enough space to breed and to help keep them off the roads. This is part of the national Hedgehog Street campaign. To learn more see this article that was published in the national press.
- 60 properties in the village are connected
- c. 16 acres of gardens are included
- The village pub, school and church are all connected.
The national Hedgehog Street organisation has told KWACS that Kirtlington has one of the biggest volunteer-run Hedgehog Streets in the country! See the map in green. To join, please make sure hedgehogs can pass from your garden to your neighbours’ gardens. All it needs is a CD sized hole in your fence or wall.
In Spring 2020, there was a rapid and significant decline in Kirtlington’s hedgehog population. We have written up the evidence for the decline which is very clear and the possible reasons for it. Click here for that article and here for another article by Professor Patrick Doncaster who researched into hedgehogs in Kirtlington Park in 1992. Click here for coverage of the loss of our hedgehogs on local BBC news.
KWACS is delighted, whenever possible, to support other communities who would like to set up their own hedgehog street. In particular, click here if you are interested in receiving a lecture about what we have done in Kirtlington. This is given either in person or via Zoom by the brother of the KWACS committee member who leads our hedgehog work. He is a wildlife photographer, film maker and public speaker. In addition, visitors are welcome to come to Kirtlington to see in person what we have done.
DONATIONS
If you would like to support our work, please click on DONATIONS above. That will take you to our on-line giving page for the KWACS Hedge Fund.
All donations will go directly to enlarging Kirtlington Hedgehog Street or supporting other communities start their own hedgehog street.
As hedgehogs have yet to evolve the ability to fly, where there is a ground difference between gardens we have to resort to innovative structures like this stone staircase and oak ramp:
As part of the project, we use foot print recording tunnels and camera traps to check on the presence of hedgehogs. A camera trap video of a hedgehog on the ramp posted to KWACS’ X (formerly Twitter) feed went viral with over 33,000 views!