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  • Aneke Janentzky

We are officially a hedgehog friendly campus!

I have never really seen many hedgehogs in my home country (I am from Germany) and I have also never done conservation work. But in the first night after I arrived on the University campus, I saw a hedgehog. Just minding its own business, strolling over a lawn in between the accommodation buildings. When Julia, the president of the Environmental Enterprises Society introduced us to the British Hedgehog Preservation Society and their accreditation scheme to make University campuses more hedgehog friendly a few months later, I learned that hedgehogs are vulnerable to extinction in the UK. Julia wanted to start a Hedgehog Team at our University and it was clear to me that I wanted to get involved and try to make a difference for hedgehogs on our campus.

After this first presentation many were excited to participate in this project, essentially because hedgehogs are just the cutest😊. But also, because there is so much nature on Stirling Campus, it’s such a wonderful wild place and it could support so much wildlife.

We were joined by members of the Grounds and Estates Team and started to work in November.

To raise awareness on our campus, making our team better known and educating students about hedgehogs, we started our own blog and created social media pages on Instagram and Facebook. We just received the award “Best Publicity” for our social media, during the Clubs and Societies Awards from our Students Union.


In December we organised a litter pick on campus, since litter is very dangerous for hedgehogs. Not only did students join us on campus, but also locals off campus and even an elementary school participated. We also had a baking competition where participants made baked goods in the form of hedgehogs and raised money for the British Hedgehog Preservation Society. You can see the results here: The Great Hedgehog Bake-Off (wixsite.com).


The accreditation scheme for hedgehog friendly campuses consists of multiple levels and depending on the actions completed after a year you can get awarded bronze, silver and then gold.

We started this project quite late last year and Covid-19 restrictions made in-person conservation work very hard. Which is why we are so happy that we achieved the bronze level in February, after only 3 months working in this project.


This was a great success and a sign that the hard work of the previous months had paid off. It also motivated us to continue our work.

During those three months we also grew from a little group of motivated students to a full Hedgehog Team with now around 30 members. We want to continue putting in the work to help our little spiky friends and make the campus a better place for all wildlife.

We are continuing to work and hope to achieve the silver level next year. There will be many interesting events in the Hedgehog Awareness week in May, so keep an eye on our social media or this blog.

Hope to see you there!

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