• 33% of community signed up so far

• Third year of educational campaign: messaging constantly refreshed & updated

• Dedicated school assembly

• Media success: national TV news and Blue Peter

• Conservation success: injured hoglets saved, nutured and re-released

We’re working on a pro bono campaign to help one of Surrey’s endangered hedgehog populations.  We’ve lost a third of our hedgehogs, one of our best-loved mammals, since the Millennium and the remaining populations are seriously endangered. Having discovered a small, but potentially viable population living near to the office in Puttenham, The View felt something had to be done – and fast – to help them not just survive, but thrive. 

Taking scientific and practical advice from Hedgehog Street plus other charities and environmental / wildlife bodies, we launched a village-wide campaign with the aim of making it one of the most hedgehog-friendly communities in the UK. In the first year, over a third of homes and the local school were signed up with objective of creating ‘hedgehog highways’ (holes in garden boundaries), to allow the hogs to travel freely. They need to wander up to a mile a night to forage and breed – and fences and walls are a major obstacle to this. We educate people on a whole host of other wildlife-friendly practices.

We also devised and conducted a ‘citizen science’ survey of the local population over the last 15 years which has been shared with various conservation bodies for their databases.

We’ve even become the ‘go-to’ people for wildlife conundrums: abandoned hoglets and even two polecat kits have been found nearby.  Once we’ve established mum is not coming back, we’ve taken them to the wonderful Wildlife Aid Hospital for appropriate care.

Finally, we collaborated with the fantastic Hedgehog Street PR team by providing families as case studies for media.  The BBC have come to film; we’ve appeared on national ITV News and one family’s children turned junior reporters.  Their self-filmed phonecam footage of their conservation efforts during Covid lockdown was used as a special feature on Blue Peter.

Believability™

Another high scoring initiative.  Relevant elements here are: ‘uses simple language, includes a ‘like me’ element’, stimulates multiple senses’, induces a positive mood in the receiver’ and ‘makes use of word-of-mouth endorsements’ among others.