March was a busy and exciting month for the St Andrews Hedgehog Friendly Campus team! We held our first litter picking event, with a team of students volunteering their time over the 6th and 7th to gather litter around David Russel Apartments and Fife Park Apartments. Lots of litter was removed, helping to reduce the risk of injury to hedgehogs foraging for food, in the run up to breeding season. We are hoping to run more litter pick events over the coming months, so keep an eye on our social media for updates.
We also held our official ‘HFC Launch Event’ on the 16th and were fortunate to have guest speakers, Jo Wilkinson from Hedgehog Friendly Campus and Kirsty Crawford from The Conservation Volunteers (TCV) talk to us about the decline of hedgehogs but also what actions we can take to support them.
The event was a great success and we saw many more students join our St Andrews HFC team and follow our social media platforms.
On the 22nd, we held an online hedgehog survey techniques course. The course was aimed at giving attendees the skills required to undertake a hedgehog survey whether in their own garden or as part of a campus wide survey. The online session looked at how to design a hedgehog survey based on the potential survey area and resources available, what equipment is required to undertake a survey and how to identify hedgehog field signs.
Following on from the survey techniques course, the St Andrews HFC team are now busy designing a survey strategy to cover as much of the campus as possible. Surveying will hopefully begin in May and continue into autumn.
If you would like to help survey for hedgehogs around campus, please get in touch, the more volunteers, the merrier!
