A Scottish veterinary nurse living in Clare who cares for up to 50 orphaned or injured hedgehogs at any given time has said urgent measures need to be introduced to prevent numbers from further dwindling in this country.
Hedgehogs are now listed as “near threatened” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s red list following a drop in numbers of at least 30 per cent over the past decade due to vehicle collisions, robotic lawnmowers, the use of pesticides and intensive farming.
Bev Truss, who runs the Hogsprickle Wildlife Rescue Centre in Broadford, has called on Irish people to stop manicuring their gardens.
“We only mow the grass three times a year here. Have a compost heap. Pile the sticks and leaves in one corner of the garden and forget all about it,” she said.
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“Don’t mow up to the edges of the garden. If you have a 2ft margin all around the garden it helps all wildlife. It would help the hedgehogs navigate through gardens. They don’t like to be out in the open. Especially in these flat green deserts that people like to have,” she said.
“Also, artificial grass is of no use in any way shape or form to wildlife. The hedgehogs can’t climb through it to reach the beetles and the worms and the invertebrates they eat.”
Ms Truss visits schools and talks to Tidy Towns committees about ways in which they can help make the environment more suitable for hedgehogs and other wildlife.
A licensed wildlife rehabber, she first moved to Ireland 25 years ago. She said the drop in hedgehog numbers has become quite obvious in recent years.
“The [dwindling] is usually caused by human behaviour. Things like hedgehogs falling down cattle grids.
“If you don’t need a cattle grid, fill it in. It’s a death pit for hedgehogs. They fall in and they can’t get back out.”
Insecticides are killing off insects so we are killing off food for hedgehogs and birds, she added.
Cars are the main enemy of hedgehogs, however. “So many are knocked down,” she said.
“During Covid people were noticing injured animals that much more. They were bringing them in when they needed help but they didn’t know how to help them. By the time they were ringing people like myself, the animals were 90 per cent dead. People need to realise that to have a wild animal in your care is actually illegal if you don’t have a licence.”
Ms Truss became involved in rescuing hedgehogs after she gave up her full-time paid work as a veterinary nurse when she had cancer several years back.
She had hedgehogs in her garden as a child when she grew up in Clyde in Scotland.
Wildlife has always been her first love. She came to Ireland with her husband 25 years ago. He works with the Shannon Rescue Helicopter. “He rescues people and I rescue animals.”
People are often under the impression hedgehogs are cuddly animals but the reality can be quite different, she said.
“If I have siblings together they will bully each other. They are solitary animals. They don’t live in groups. And if mum has given birth to her hoglets and you disturb a nest, mum will leg it and leave the hoglets to die or she will cannibalise them as it’s a source of protein for her as she is a wild animal. Her maternal instincts only kick in when the hoglets are about a week old.”
She doesn’t receive any State funding and relies on donations from the public or self funds all her work.
“The Government would prefer to give millions to greyhounds and horses.”
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