A array of hedgehogs were released back into the wild at Woburn Abbey Gardens yesterday.
The founder, Trustees and volunteers from Andrew’s Hedgehog Hospital released 28 of the prickly animals, with the support of The Duchess of Bedford, patron for the charity.
Andrew’s Hedgehog Hospital was founded by Mrs & Mrs Tett in 1993, who started to look after three hedgehogs in their house and expanded the fantastic charity from there. Between April and December last year, 576 hedgehogs came through the hospital where the team worked tirelessly to nurse them back to health before they are ready to return to their natural habitat.
Woburn Abbey Gardens is one of five release sites and according to Andrew’s Hedgehog Hospital Trustee Jan Fennell; ‘Woburn offers the best release site, everybody is on board, everybody does what they can and the Family support is exceptional.’
This is the second release at Woburn Abbey and before the release last year there were no hedgehogs in the Woburn Abbey Gardens. It’s important to repopulate areas like this with hedgehogs as numbers have dwindled over the last few years.
The Abbey Gardens is a particularly suitable environment for hedgehogs to thrive, there is a large expanse of garden to roam in and it’s fully fenced off keeping out natural predators such as badgers. The hedgehogs enjoy lots of natural cover and hibernation spaces, there’s also plenty of food available to them in the gardens.
Andrew Grout, Head of Gardens at Woburn Abbey said: “We are proud to be working with Andrew’s Hedgehog Hospital and to have facilitated another successful release today. Our Gardeners work hard to ensure we protect and encourage the wildlife in our gardens and releasing these little ones today is part of our overall commitment to ensure we protect a balanced biodiverse environment.”
Woburn Abbey and Gardens are open to visitors daily until September 1.
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