In recent weeks, striking posters have been spotted in various locations in Zaanstad, reading: “Help, our hedgehog is missing.” This appears to be a plea for a missing pet, but it turns out to be an urgent cry for help for the shrinking hedgehog population. The Party for the Animals Zaanstad is behind the campaign and is drawing attention to the alarming status of this protected animal. Party volunteers also built Zaanstad’s first hedgehog Dome today.
The hedgehog is a protected species and lives primarily in parks, deciduous forests, and sheltered (garden) areas with ample vegetation, hedges, and shrubs. They love untidy places under leaf piles and branches where they can hide and sleep. Over the past thirty years, the number of hedgehogs in the Netherlands has halved. An estimated 135,000 hedgehogs are killed by cars each year. Hedgehogs also die from preventable causes such as drowning in ponds, poisoning from slug pellets and insecticides, collisions, or injuries from robotic lawnmowers left running at night. Hedgehogs are also struggling due to a lack of insects. This is the result of the disappearance of greenery; gardens and public spaces are increasingly becoming paved over, including in Zaanstad.
With the construction of the hedgehog Dome, the Pluktuin Jagersveld has gained a new habitat for hedgehogs. The hedgehog Dome offers multiple nesting chambers for hedgehogs and is based on a nature-based design that requires no maintenance. Besides providing hedgehogs with a safe haven, it also serves as a living microhabitat that benefits multiple animal species, including insects.
“If hedgehogs are doing poorly, insects, soil life, and greenery will also suffer. Hedgehogs are an essential part of our local nature, but they’re literally being wiped off the map,” says Party for the Animals (PvdD) party leader Stella Pieterson. “With our hedgehog campaign, we want to make Zaan residents aware that we’re losing our ‘garden helpers’ unless we take urgent action now.”
The Party for the Animals is urging residents to make their gardens hedgehog-friendly and minimize hazards. By replacing paving stones with greenery, leaving leaves for nesting material, and creating a “hedgehog highway” (small openings in fences), hedgehogs will have the space they need. And if people would also like to build a Hedgehog Dome, more information can be found at: https://www.hedgehogprogram.com/nl/projecten/actieve-projecten/egelburcht/
The party also calls on the municipality to contribute to the well-being of the hedgehog by taking additional measures in its green and mowing policy, so that hedgehogs and their hiding places are better protected.
