who are we?

Hi everyone, we are a group of friendly individuals who want to work hard to ensure our hedgehogs are safe on campus! Below is a photo taken by one of our lovely members. 

Our Story

Hedgehogs are one of Britain's most loved mammals. but they are in serious decline. The situation is so serious that in 2020 they were put on the Red List and are now classified vulnerable to extinction in Great Britain. There are fewer than one million hedgehogs left in the country, which is why we are so passionate about doing our bit to help protect them.

Hedgehogs are nocturnal and spend their evenings on the move. They can travel more than a mile each night, chomping on beetles, caterpillars, worms and other insects. Their natural food supplies are becoming more scarce as there are fewer hedgerows and woodland edges for them to explore.  Our campus is a fantastic green space that provides a range of habitats including woodland, so should make an ideal hedgehog habitat.  

We know that there are hedgehogs at Whiteknights campus, but we don't know much about how many there are and how frequently they visit. Through this project we aim to start tracking hedgehog movements using night cameras, establish feeding stations and raise awareness of how dangerous litter and garden machinery like strimmers can be to our prickly friends. We will do all we can to encourage hedgehogs to thrive on our campus, including cleaning up litter and running education sessions for other students. We hope to also do conservation tasks such as hazard auditing and surveys, working with campus grounds and estates staff as well as academics. 

We will be working through tasks to help the university achieve bronze accreditation for the Hedgehog Friendly Campus scheme. https://www.hedgehogfriendlycampus.co.uk/ 

where will the money go?

• £250 - for one hedgehog feeding station and wildlife tracking camera. We hope to set up a live video feed so anyone will be able to view our campus hedgehogs.
• £50 –  for educational resource/activity sheets for workshops.
• £43 – strimmer stickers (25) and logo stickers (475) so we can hand them out at events.
• £40 – leaflets with information on what to do if you find an injured hedgehog and promotion for the society (500).
• £25 – posters for events (25 per event and we aim to do 3 events before the end of this academic year).
• Some of the funding may be used for live-saving transport if we ever have to take any injured hedgehogs to Herbie Hedeghog Rescue centre. 

Rewards and contact us

Any donation would be greatly appreciated but we will have prizes for the top three donors! 

Ramandeep Nijjar:

My nickname is Raman and I am passionate about nature, sports and charity work.

My email is r.nijjar@student.reading.ac.uk

Nilo Mason: 

I am autistic, love crocodiles and crochet in my free time.

My email is nilo.mason@student.reading.ac.uk

Help us succeed

You can help us bring hedgehogs back from the brink. You don't need to give money to help us succeed! Please share this project with anyone you think would support us – on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, by email, telephone, in a chat. 

In fact, share it with everyone you know as we think it's a great idea, and the more people who know about it, the more likely we are going to be able to make a big impact for the hedgehogs. 

And we know we said you don't need to give money to help us, but we'd love it if you did! Please sponsor us and help support us so we can help improve the welfare of all the hedgehogs on campus!