News:
Project of the Month October

Volunteer ‘hedgehog mums’ now need your generous donations to care for hundreds of injured and orphaned hedgehogs!

Who doesn't know the wonderful story by the Brothers Grimm about the hare and the hedgehog in a field in the open countryside? ‘Those were the days,’ a hedgehog would sigh today. After fleeing hunger in the intensively farmed and cleared agricultural countryside, the hedgehog finds, after an exhausting journey involving dangerous road crossings, that even in a residential area, there are hardly any natural gardens left as alternative habitats: more and more often, ground-level fences, plastic screens and gravel front gardens block his path..

Even if our hedgehog has found a safe garden, it is still at risk of having its snout scalped by a robotic lawnmower, being slashed by a brush cutter, having its feet severed, or having stones flung into its face and eyes by a battery-powered leaf blower.

The consequences of our increasingly technological gardening practices are miserable suffering and an agonising end for many West European Hedgehogs. Our native hedgehog is in danger of soon ending up on the ‘Red List’ of mammals in Germany.

Fortunately for the tens of thousands of injured, orphaned and malnourished hedgehogs, as well as late-born, underweight hedgehog babies, who urgently need our help and care in these shortening late autumn days and the coming weeks, there are many volunteer ‘hedgehog mothers’ and hedgehog rescuers in our country. Out of a deep love for animals, they actively and selflessly care for injured and needy hedgehogs – often for days and months until they are safe through the winter in their hedgehog stations and officially recognised care centres.

However, the costs of veterinary treatment and medicines, species-appropriate food, hygiene products, rent and energy are too much for most ‘hedgehog mums’ to bear financially. That is why we have been supporting six carefully selected hedgehog rescue centres in Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Berlin and Brandenburg for many years, all of which have been approved by regional veterinary authorities. Our ‘hedgehog mothers’ and their teams of helpers and affiliated hedgehog care branches care for up to 2,300 hedgehogs in need of help every year.

Right now, new hedgehog patients are being brought daily to the hedgehog rescue centres we support. We currently need approximately € 23,800 to provide species-appropriate care and rescue hundreds of prickly charges until their release later this autumn or next spring.

We are dependent on your generous donations so that we can at least alleviate the most significant financial worries of the ‘hedgehog foster mothers’ and their volunteers in the coming months as they rescue hundreds of injured, orphaned and malnourished hedgehogs.

With your hedgehog donation, you are helping to give one of the oldest wild animals on the planet, and one of the most popular wild animals in our country, the chance of a second life in freedom.