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.
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’ twitter feed went viral with over 33,000 views!
