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| Join in with the KUHoglets |
Hi everyone, it’s been a while since the last blog and we’ve been busy at the University with various projects and surveys.
One of the new projects for which we had a soft launch at the last Kingston Biodiversity Network, was our Kingston University (KU) Hoglets team. We are are a newly formed team working to implement the Hedgehog Friendly Campus initiative at the University and encourage wider participation to allow those who take part, to take the learning into the wider community. We went with the name hoglets, as that’s what a baby hedgehog is called, so this is us taking our baby steps 😊
We have a small working group already and we welcome anyone who would like to join us.
Why take part?
For those of you who attended the KBN talk in October from Jo from the Hedgehog Friendly Campus (HFC) campaign, you would have heard that we have Hedgehogs in Kingston – which is great. But their numbers have reduced everywhere – and they are now vulnerable to extinction in the UK – that’s a pretty damming indication on our impacts on this species – one which is supposed to be one of the nation’s best loved mammals!
Using existing resources such as https://bighedgehogmap.org/ to look at the status of hedgehogs (presence only) is interesting. The maps below are all screen shots from the site. With screen shots of Kingston as well as the areas around our campuses.
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| Screen shot showing records of Hedgehogs across the area |
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| The same screen shot with the satellite layer turned on, could the barriers that I've roughly highlighted in blue be part of the explanation for distribution? |
Are the large tracks of clear areas of absence – is this due to lack of surveys and lack of reporting?
Is this due to the way we manage our land in the area which are resulting in impacts on species like hedgehogs, as well as driving the relationship between hedgehogs and one of their main food competitors badgers, into a predator prey relationship – as we are impacting on their food sources at the invertebrate level?
On another land management front, have we put up too many barriers for hedgehog movement resulting in their numbers disappearing from certain bits of the borough?
Initiative 1: better data – As originally said by the Senegalese forestry engineer Baba Dioum and paraphrased ever since by our most influential thinkers and leaders such as David Attenborough "In the end we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught”
So lets start understanding better what’s going on in Kingston around hedgehogs and other wildlife and teaching people what we can do to make things better.
There are definitely lack of data points on our University Sites (I've roughly changed the colour of our sites to orange below to get them to show up on the satellite maps which I screen shot from https://bighedgehogmap.org/). We are looking to address this by undertaking surveys for hedgehogs in 2020 (mini training talks and small scale implementation) and 2021 (full surveys of all of our sites). For some of our sites, there are there are tantalising records from a few streets away.
We also want to make sure that as many members of the community take part, not just on surveying our sites, but learning the skills and taking those into their own back gardens and local green spaces – wouldn’t it be amazing if we could do surveys that would fill in the gaps in these maps with information?
Are there missing records from https://bighedgehogmap.org/ ?- if you know that you’ve seen or have hedgehogs on sites around us, but you haven’t reported them on this site – get reporting and recording. As it could help local conservation work like targeted areas for locals to talk to each other and implement a local hedgehog street scheme.
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| Penrhyn Road and Knights Park complexes |
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| Clay Hills Halls |
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| Seething Wells Halls |
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| Tolworth Court Sports Gound |
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| Roehampton Vale Campus |
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| Kingston Hill and Dorich House |
Initiative 2: Education and behaviour change
Whenever we have run events in any of our sites and the wider community, we always see the same problem impacting wildlife – litter! Lets teach people the true impacts of litter so that we all start taking more responsibility and stopping the impacts on wildlife.
It seems to be one of the banes of human existence that we seem to be programmed to be lazy about getting rid of our waste properly, let alone reusing valuable resources such as plastic or paper by recycling to minimise raw materials being used to make new stuff.
I’m sure you’ve seen it when you’ve been out for lock down walks, the evidence of mini picnics that people think it’s acceptable to leave in the park, using excuses such as the bin being full to not clean up.
But its this kind of litter – contaminated with food, that impacts wildlife the most. The smell draws animals to it as they are foraging. I’ve seen dead animals in ponds as they have been drawn into bottles and not been able to get out. Wildlife hospitals see the consequences every day with entanglement causing death or amputations where animals have not been able to be rescued in time.
Hedgehogs with their spins are really vulnerable to entanglement. During various talks we’ve had with the HFC, they have given examples of hedgehogs getting stuck in crisp packets as the spines trap them inside when they stick their heads in in search of the smell they have followed.
As litter is such a big deal, we are encouraging everyone to get involved in the latest campaign by HFC - The Big Hog-Friendly Lockdown Litter Pick Challenge:
From 2nd November until 18th December 2020, HFC are holding a UK-wide competition to find out which university can collect the most litter in and around the local community. The winning university receives a free Hedgehog House complete with a bag of hedgehog food for their campus!
All participants (whether from the winning team or not) will also receive a digital certificate from us in recognition of their efforts. The litter doesn’t have to be collected from our sites, and if you are already doing litter picks, why not get your efforts in helping wildlife also acknowledged?
Send in any photos of your groups doing litter picks to me at biodiversity@kingston.ac.uk importantly it needs to show the number of bags of litter collected. While I actually don’t expect us to win, I think when we all clear litter as part of our events, we are really benefiting wildlife, and the only way we can keep this issue in the forefront of peoples’ minds is to show them the photographic evidence. I want to continue to show people how much litter we end up collecting from our surrounding areas.
This link will take you to a PDF information leaflet with the basics on how you can take part, adapted from the information leaflet created by HFC team specifically for us :)
Even better, if you are already taking part in the other wonderful initiative being run by the Sport and Active Lifestyle team called the "The KU Plogging Challenge" you can get your activity to count to the The Big Hog-Friendly Lockdown Litter Pick Challenge too!!!!
The KU Plogging Challenge details for those of you who haven’t heard:
1–27 November 2020 – four weeks.
What is Plogging?
Plogging is a Swedish fitness craze that combines exercise and eco-friendly activity.The idea is simple-go out for a walk, jog or run and pick up any plastic you find on your route.
What is the challenge?
For four weeks, starting on 1 November 2020, grab yourself a pair of gloves and a bin liner and go out plogging as many times as you can. (Following latest COVID PPE guidelines).
Why take the challenge?
• Win yourself a £50 voucher and a book for being our top plogger-awarded to most amount of plastic collected and most amount of trips out.
• Improve your health and well-being
• Positive impact on your local environment and community
• Clock up volunteering hours and points for the Kingston Awards
• Enhance your CV and employability by engaging in extra curriculum activities
• Enhance your HEARS report for future employers
• Inspire others.
How to take part
Simply register your interest with the 'Sport and Active Lifestyle' Team to get all the details. Contact Jo Heath, Sports Development Manager, mailto:J.Heath@kingston.ac.uk
Initiative 3: Communications:
We also need to combine this with a communications campaign to win hearts and minds and get people to change – where do we start with this, can you help? We need the next generation showing us how we can communicate effectively with them to get change and we need our generations to keep hammering it home to our lazy careless contemporaries to get them to start caring.
This isn’t a cultural thing, which I’ve seen many people comment on, to pass the blame onto others – lets stop that narrative. The laziness and carelessness that I see happen re litter comes from all walks of life and different cultures – it’s clearly a human species thing. So how do we get people to change without starting those same blame games that allow people to think that they are not the problem and that its always someone else? Help!
Take care until next time
Sivi
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