The Hedgehog-Friendly Campus campaign has included a variety of activities around the University of Edinburgh to protect hedgehogs, under the auspices of the university’s Sustainability team, and with the participation of the Estates team and numerous volunteers. The project is part of a UK-wide programme by the British Hedgehog Preservation Society.

Dr Elizabeth Vander Meer said:

“I coordinate the Hedgehog Friendly Campus campaign activities. Yes, I would say the campaign involves citizen science, in terms of the tunnel surveys, and night surveys we have recently undertaken. Both types of surveys, however, do not tell us how many hedgehogs we have on our campuses, but do let us know that they are present (so that we have to take action for them). We hold results […] for the tunnel surveys (from Easter Bush, King’s Buildings, Pollock Halls, Centre for Regenerative Medicine, Peffermill and Firbush), so this consists of 5 day logs of footprints that have been noted in the tunnels as well as photos of the footprints and any other activity nearby. We have shared the footprints on twitter and other social media.”

Learn more

Blogpost describing data collection 

Hedgehog rescue at the Edinburgh BioQuarter – Social Responsibility and Sustainability

For volunteering opportunities, please see the University of Edinburgh Hedgehog Friendly Campus twitter account 

https://twitter.com/UoEdinburghHogs

Biodiversity at the University of Edinburgh 

https://www.ed.ac.uk/sustainability/what-we-do/biodiversity 

Image: University of Edinburgh Social Responsibility and Sustainability

Citizen Science case study: Hedgehog-friendly campus at Edinburgh University / Edinburgh Open Research by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0