Friends of the University Grant Application 

Dear Friends of the University,

We would like to apply for a £1000 grant for the hedgehog society.

About our prickly pals 

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 as vulnerable to extinction in Great Britain. There are estimated to be 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.

How we want to help 

We know that there are hedgehogs at Whiteknights campus, but we don’t know how many there are and how frequently they visit. Through this project we aim to start tracking hedgehog movements using night cameras in pre-made or our own custom built hedgehog hotels. Dr Phil Baker- who has published multiple papers studying hedgehogs in Reading- has recommended to us high quality cameras and hedgehog houses at the price of £250 each. We would love to set a few of these up around campus and allow our University community to view live links of the hedgehogs to monitor their health and activity.

To combat the previously mentioned diminishing food supplies, we plan to establish feeding stations to supply the hedgehogs with fresh food every few days. Another solution to this growing issue is building or purchasing bug hotels that increase insect biodiversity on campus. We really want to get hands on with this project and would love to build our own custom hedgehog and bug hotels, however we need the funds for purchasing the wood/materials and possibly any tools we may need.

As well as scarce food, many hedgehogs were rushed to Herbie’s rescue or found deceased on our campus just last summer due to dehydration. We desperately need the funds and materials to build a safe and maintainable irrigation system to ensure the hedgehogs always have access to safe water on campus, so we don’t have a repeat of last summer.

We want to engage the local community too, and we plan to run a stall at the university’s community festival to highlight the issues facing hedgehogs. Another killer issue hedgehogs face on campus is ponds with no viable exit, as soon as they fall in they cannot get back out; to fix this we hope to use wood and our carpentry skills to create ramps that ensure the hedgehogs can exit ponds safely.

We are also doing research-based conservation tasks such as hazard auditing and surveys, working with campus grounds and estates staff as well as academics. We want to engage the local community too, as we plan to run a stall at the university’s community festival.

We will be working through a criteria to help the university achieve bronze accreditation for the hedgehog-friendly campus scheme but we are very ambitious and want to then continue onto silver and gold. https://www.hedgehogfriendlycampus.co.uk/

A successful grant award would enable us to take significant steps towards protecting this vulnerable species on campus. To summarise, the grant would help fund: purchasing/building hedgehog feeding stations, wildlife tracking cameras, building ramps for ponds, bug hotels, hedgehog houses, and crafting our own custom irrigation system. It will help us with funding for printing: strimmer stickers to put on grounds team tools, promotional materials in the form of leaflets, posters and logo stickers. Some of the funding may also be used for life-saving transport if we ever have to take any injured hedgehogs to Herbie Hedgehog Rescue centre.

Thank you for taking the time to read our application! We look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Nilo Mason and Raman Nijjar

Co-presidents of the Hedgehog society at UoR