We have teamed up with Medway Valley Countryside Partnership to become a volunteer hub for the NHMP.

The NHMP is a PTES and BHPS-led, Natural England-funded pilot project , in collaboration with the Zoological Society of London, London HogWatch, Durham University, MammalWeb, Nottingham Trent University. 

The NHMP is an exciting new pilot project, that will, for the first time, produce robust hedgehog population estimates. Where previous large-scale surveys give us information on where hedgehogs are, this new survey will tell us how many there are.

Surveys that indicate only where hedgehogs are present, don’t reveal how that population is faring until it has disappeared, but monitoring numbers can give us warning if the population is in trouble. This survey will also look at regional and habitat differences in hedgehog populations, to identify what factors impact them. This knowledge can be used to make effective conservation plans, so that we can reverse the decline of this iconic species.

This is how it works…

1. Networks of wildlife cameras are placed at sites all over Britain by local volunteer hubs like us.
2. After a month, the cameras are collected in and images are uploaded to an online portal called MammalWeb. AI will remove any photos with humans in and volunteer spotters can log in and identify hedgehogs and other wildlife.
3. Once images are classified, hedgehog density (how many in a given area) can be determined using the newly developed Random Encounter Model (REM) methodology.
4. As the project progresses, we’ll be able to compare across sites, habitats, and crucially across years. With this population data, we can improve our understanding of changing hedgehog populations, and focus our conservation efforts accordingly.

The images from year 1 have been uploaded to mammalweb.org, and we need you to help us classify the animals which can be seen in them. You just need to sign up for a MammalWeb account and select the NHMP project to classify.