A pioneering new three-year pilot project - the National Hedgehog Monitoring Programme (NHMP) – was launched in Spring 2024. Led by wildlife charities The British Hedgehog Preservation Society (BHPS) and People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES), in partnership with Nottingham Trent University, ZSL’s London HogWatch, Durham University and MammalWeb, and largely funded by Natural England. This unique combination of AI, trail cameras, and home-based volunteers will produce crucial insights into the factors causing hedgehog populations to plummet, and enable conservationists to implement practical conservation measures to try to reverse the decline. As the hub for London, our survey sites include Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Hampstead, Barnes, Chiswick and Kingston.

For the first time, this will enable robust estimates of hedgehog populations in different habitats across the country, show how these are changing year on year, and in time give a national estimate of Britain’s hedgehog population. The new project utilises sophisticated, cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI), which is a world-first in hedgehog conservation. ZSL’s cutting-edge camera-trapping techniques which have advanced population estimation, have been the basis of the NHMP methodology. To sign up and become a ‘spotter’, visit ptes.org/nhmp.