Homeless hedgehogs will be transported 100 miles across the Highlands in the hope of transforming Ullapool into a “haven” for the cute creatures.
The effort is being spearheaded by a west coast marine conservation group, whose members are turning their attention to the land on this occasion.
Local tour boat worker Noel Hawkins, 53, is linking up with Highland Wildlife Rescue in Brora for the project.
His Ullapool Sea Savers group will arrange the transport of dozens of looked-after animals.
And now he needs locals to lend a hand by offering up space in their garden…
How could Ullapool become a hedgehog haven?
The plan is to bring over six to eight juvenile hedgehogs at first and set them up in hedgehog houses (essentially wooden pens) on the property of interested volunteers with suitable sites.
Each hedgehog house costs around £30, with that money going back into hedgehog conservation efforts.
But it needn’t cost residents a penny.
The Sea Savers will be buying the homes and handing them out for free to participants.
The money is coming from funds that were raised earlier in the year.
What would I need to do?
Participants in the programme must feed the animals for a couple of weeks, which allows the spiky little mammals to establish the house as their habitat.
The homes will then be left out over winter, so the hedgehogs have somewhere to return to and hibernate. Ultimately, the goal is to make Ullapool a “hedgehog haven”.
Noel said: “Hopefully they will use it throughout the winter, then if they spread about, we’re hoping it will bolster the local numbers.”
A 2022 report released by the British Hedgehog Preservation Society estimated that hedgehog populations have declined by an average of 8.3% a year for the past two decades.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature, an independent conservation group, added hedgehogs to its “Red List” in 2020.
That means the small mammal is “vulnerable to extinction”.
Jane Wilson, centre manager for Highland Wildlife Rescue, said hedgehogs are the animal that’s most commonly brought into the centre, with its “Hogspital,” continually busy.
She said: “On the one hand we’ve got diminishing numbers and them landing in trouble more often, but we’ve got higher numbers of them coming into care. So what we seem to have is a growing concern by the public for the welfare of these animals, because people understand that their numbers are under threat.”
While she expects the centre will be even busier in the coming months with Balmore SSPCA set to close, she was heartened by the number of people in the Ullapool area who came forward to help the hedgehogs.
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