‘Give hedgehogs a helping hand during this challenging season’
HEDGEHOG RESCUE and the GSPCA have urged islanders to look out for the native night crawler in this dry season as unprecedented numbers are being found mortally wounded, ill and quite often dead.
After one of the hottest Julys on record with very little rainfall, the ground has become too hard, food has retreated underground and water sources have become scarce.
Local hedgehog welfare charities have asked islanders to leave bowls of water, dry biscuits and wet dog or cat food outside at night for the hedgehogs to be able to regain energy.
Hedgehogs will weigh approximately a kilo when mature and healthy but one abandoned hedgehog came to the GSPCA weighing only 55 grams.
Founder of Hedgehog Rescue Dawn Robin said: ‘This long, hot dry spell has made the ground so hard and dry they can’t eat the snails, slugs and worms that make up their diet. Hedgehogs suffer from heat exhaustion, get tired and dehydrated. At the moment we are getting between three and four per day coming to us and we get plenty of calls from people who say they have seen one in their garden and they’re out now.
‘Please, you need [to] act when you see the hedgehog – something is very wrong if you see them in the day. They really will need some help, so act when you see, bring it to us, take it somewhere that it can helped.’
July through to August is usually the busiest time of year for hedgehogs to be found requiring attention, but this year the GSPCA has seen more than ever.
As with Hedgehog Rescue, the GSPCA receives between three and four every day.
GSPCA manager Steve Byrne said: ‘We get them in with all sorts of injuries, cut heads from a strimmer, severely dehydrated, heat stroke, malnourished. We maybe will have about 120 at peak times but at the moment we have 140 hedgehogs in our care. Of any one species we see more hedgehogs than any other animal. So we would like to appeal to the public to put out water for the hedgehogs and leave out wet food, preferably cat or dog, so they are able to eat too.’
