Proud to be Hog Friendly

Sadly over recent years the Hedgehog population has been declining rapidly due to littering, bonfires, road accidents and many more reasons. Alongside many other Universities on the Hedgehog Friendly Campus Scheme, Staffs is aiming to make sure that our campus is a better, friendlier and overall safer environment for all of our Hedgehogs living closely. We are doing this through a variety of initiatives so that all of our students are aware of how they can get involved and help.

 

 

Our Stoke campus has a nature reserve, which is a brilliant habitat for Hedgehogs. This is why we wanted to get involved with the project. Our Project Earth Society has been working towards the Bronze Award within the Hedgehog Friendly Campus scheme and have been doing an amazing job. The main aim was to make sure that we can spread awareness of hedgehogs, and we have done this by putting posters and flyers around campus so that students know what to do to help a hedgehog, and the dangers of littering and not checking bonfires before lighting them. We’ve also been collecting donations through fundraising pots in our venues so that we can help support the British Hedgehog Preservation Society.

 

The Project Earth society organised a litter pick with committee members from other societies, to ensure our campus is clean and no longer dangerous to hedgehogs living in the nature reserve and surrounding area. Alongside this, our accommodation representatives, called ‘Residence Life Mentors’ have been taking action in various ways. For example, they have been discussing how we can provide safe spaces and journeys for Hedgehogs during the winter, as well as building hedgehog homes and safe boxes for Hedgehogs to use as shelter when hibernating.

 

We regularly encourage our students to unlock their creativity and maximise their potential, and I’m happy to say our students have been doing just that in many ways, making us Proud To Be Staffs by looking after wildlife in our area