Hedgehog Project

Our Hedgehog Project

Hog in Sarah’s garden on West Avenue, Stockton Heath.

In the Summer of 2025, we started a long-term project to protect and increase the hedgehog population in and around the village. Our focus in 2026 is to engage with Stockton Heath Primary School to help the hedgehogs in and around the school grounds. You can keep up to date with our progress here:

  • October 2026 – School video footage update
  • July 2026 – Is the hot weather the cause of the dead hedgehog in the churchyard?
  • June 2026 – Feeding stations and field cameras installed at St Thomas’ School
  • April 2026 – 19 new hedgehog houses and feeding stations in the village
  • March 2026 – Plans to extend the school project to Stockton Heath Primary
  • March 2026 – Hedgehog story time
  • March 2026 – School assembly and meeting out Hedgehog Champions
  • October 2025 – Our project is open for votes as part of the Co-op’s Community Fund
  • September 2025 – Join is in recording hedgehog sighting https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1yrjk9CyPzohgyvvgtiO-8912KYc9wDB8AaV_CvOmd8c/edit

October 2026

We went back to our Hedgehog Champions at St Thomas’ infants’ school (now in year one) to show the footage we’d captured over the summer holidays. It’s only two minutes long as two of the cameras fell over quite early. The video pauses in the middle as the cat comes face to face with the fox, the children had to guess what happened next, all were surprised. You can view the video here https://youtu.be/IV7Gzi1xgis.

We also put out two hedgehog houses with the field cameras, very late for this year’s hibernating hedgehogs but they will stay in situ now with fingers crossed for next year’s occupation and breeding. We have also agreed to work with the new reception class as our 2026/27 Hedgehog Champions.

July 2026

Our field cameras that we put out at the school last month captured some great footage and on 3rd July we met up with our Hedgehog champions for a viewing. They were reminded with a smile that they weren’t Fox Champions when getting more excited about the fox than the hedgehogs. You can see the six minute video at St Thomas’ Primary School 7th July 2026

A few days later WASH, with the help of our reception class Hedgehog Champions hosted the full school assembly. We showed them our footage and had preprepared questions from the audience and the answers were given by the Hedgehog Champions, did you know that hedgehogs have around 7,000 spines? The reception class were amazing, and we ate into the school day because of with so many questions from the audience.

July 2026

A dead hedgehog in the churchyard was reported to us today. We’ve buried the poor thing and given the long hot weather, added a water tray down by the church hall. Help from the wonderful WASH community keeping it clean and topped up would be appreciated.

There are watering cans and a water butt to the right as you face the entrance and an outside tap on the church wall facing Ellesmere Road.

May 2026

We’ve now installed two feeding stations and three field-cameras at St Thomas’ school to record nighttime visitors, fingers crossed for hedgehogs.

April 2026

Funded by our Coop community fund grant (please vote for us if you are a member), today we had 19 young families from the local Brownies and St Thomas’ School join us to build hedgehog houses and take away feeding stations. Many thanks to St Thomas’ Church for the free use of the hall. Well done Elsie, one of our reception class hedgehog champions who built her house but left it with us to donate to the school.

March 2026

WASH have joined St Thomas’ Church’s project team overseeing the Major Works Project. A £1.9m National Lottery Heritage grant application to undertake essential restoration and internal reordering to the church. WASH will take an active role in developing their Positive Environmental Impact objectives within the application. Part of this is to repeat our work with St Thomas’ Primary School with Stockton Heath Primary School (SHP). As SHP has very little green space, the intention is to use the church yard as their hedgehog classroom. More information on the project can be found here Major Works Project – St Thomas & St Mary Magdalene

Update, October 2026, we now have a letter of support for the project from the school and have submitted a detailed project plan and costing to the project team to form part of their bid. The National Lottery Heritage fund has accepted the expression of interest with a development phase submission to be made in November 2026. If accepted, significant funding will be received in March 2027 to fund the significant cost of moving the project forward. A final decision is expected in 2028. Our project will the school could therefore start in March 2027.

March 2026

WASH had a wonderful time this morning at St Thomas’ Primary, presenting their assembly during Science Week talking about our work to protect and improve biodiversity and how science is used to help biodiversity.

We then went into the reception class to make them our Hedgehog Champions, helping us to discover the use of the school grounds by hedgehogs, if any, and deciding what to do protect and encourage them.

Thank you to the amazing pupils for their interest and enthusiasm and the school for their help and cooperation.

We went back to see our Hedgehog Champions later in the month the read Hedgehog related stories

October 2025

We are very pleased to have been chosen as one of the many community groups and charities to share in the Co-op’s £5m Local Community Fund, supporting our Hedgehog Project. If you are already a Co-op member, please log in and vote to choose our cause, or download the Co-op App to become a member: https://coopapp.onelink.me/ftOk/dtdn49q6. To kick start one of our activities we will receive £500 in March 2026 and further funding in November 2026 which will be dependent on the number of votes we receive. Please help us maximise our funding and help our hedgehogs. You can vote for any cause within 15 miles of your post code.

September 2025

We want to track over hedgehog sightings and are asking everyone to submit a record of any sightings, alive or dead using this Google Form:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1yrjk9CyPzohgyvvgtiO-8912KYc9wDB8AaV_CvOmd8c/edit

It’s a simple form asking for:

  • Your name
  • Where:  Please be as accurate as possible, we are happy to receive What3Words, grid references, coordinates or just the post code, (with house number if you’re happy with that).  If unsure, give as much information as possible.
  • Environment: For example, garden, woodland, park, roadside.
  • Date
  • Time of day: Pick from the list given
  • How many hedgehogs: Pick from the list given
  • Any other information: Let us know anything else you think may be of interest especially if your sighting is of a dead or injured hedgehog.

If you have regular visitors then we would love to know, just leave it a couple of weeks between reporting sightings.

Please visit out Facebook page and share any photos or videos.

Over time we will update this page with the results of sighting and more information of our project.

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