The nights are drawing in, temperatures are dropping and hedgehogs will be starting their hibernation, so it’s time for Woking Hedgehogs to reflect on 2024.
As in previous years, our main focus was our wildlife camera lending library. This year we were very fortunate to have Helen join the Woking Hedgehogs team. She has done an excellent job managing this aspect of the project, so thank you Helen! 12 loans were completed, with one confirmed hedgehog sighting. Plenty of other wildlife was seen though, particularly foxes, and all borrowers enjoyed the experience. There was a huge amount of interest in borrowing a camera, so we expect that 2025 will be a busy year for the camera library – we are looking into ways of reducing the wait list time, allowing us to lend out more cameras and find more hedgehogs!
May saw Hedgehog Awareness week and the launch of our Make a Hole for a Hedgehog competition. Five people who sent us photos of the hedgehog hole in their garden fence won a PTES Hedgehog Highway sign, with one lucky entrant winning their own wildlife camera! Thanks to Woking library for providing hedgehog themed kids craft sessions during Hedgehog Awareness week, where they made the ever popular pom-pom hedgehogs.
Woking Hedgehogs also held several public engagement events. In April we held a pop-up stall in Woking library, raising awareness of wildlife friendly gardening, challenging people with our fiendishly difficult hedgehog quiz and showing off photos from the cameras. As part of Great Big Green Week, we had a stall at the June Repair Cafe, encouraging people to report their hedgehog sightings, make holes in their fences, enter our competition and sign up to borrow a wildlife camera.
One of our favourite events of the year was joining Surrey Wildlife Trust at their Wilder Families event at Brookwood Park in July. Children had a lot of fun making paper hedgehog hats and learning about hedgehogs, with the most popular fact being that hedgehogs often have shiny poo (it’s full of beetle wing cases)!
Planning is now underway for next year. Camera loans will start again around late March, so please do get in touch if you’re interested in borrowing one. Hedgehog week is taking place 5th -11th May, so keep an eye out for hedgehoggy activities we’ll be doing to mark the week.
As ever, we welcome new volunteers and ideas for activities we can do to support the hedgehog population of Woking. We’d love to hear from you if you’re interested in getting involved!
