Bridport has been declared Britain’s first Hedgehog Town by the Dorset Mammal Group. To celebrate, Bridport’s first Hedgehog Day will take place on Easter Saturday, April 19th from 10am to 3pm in Bridport Community Orchard and St Mary’s Church Hall.
There will be stalls, food, music, information, storytelling, shadow puppets, activities for children and a raffle. Free entrance.
The number of hedgehogs has declined drastically in recent years. Making Bridport Britain’s first Hedgehog Town is an initiative by the Dorset Mammal Group to encourage people here to make their gardens more hedgehog friendly and to facilitate research on hedgehogs locally. We want to educate the public about hedgehogs and their ecology and how we can help them survive.
Much research is still needed about hedgehogs – in many ways more is known about wildlife such as tigers in Africa than about some British wildlife. We hope to involve local people in citizen research, to find out how many hedgehogs we have in Bridport, where they go and where they live.
Hedgehogs go for long walks and often visit many gardens, so we are hoping that local residents will link their gardens together with hedgehog tunnels in walls and fences.
Hedgehogs roam through as many as eight gardens each night gobbling up slugs and nasty beetles. Learn how to make your garden hedgehog friendly and make safe places for them to rest up over winter.
Join us for some hedgehog fun, and learn about the gardeners’ best friend, the slug eating hedgehog. Help to get Bridport Hedgehog Town off to a good start by coming to Bridport Hedgehog Day.
