Chester: Royal approval for university's hedgehog heroes

Lyndon Howson spent 18 months building and leading the the Hedgehog Friendly Campus Project

University students have won royal recognition for protecting hedgehogs and boosting their population on campus.

Chester undergraduate Lyndon Howson and his team built feeding stations and homes for the quilled mammals.

The team's work at the University of Chester has been fed into an initiative at Chester Zoo to monitor the the country's hedgehog population.

Lyndon was invited to Buckingham Palace to talk about the conservation project.

Lyndon Howson was invited to Buckingham Palace to talk about the conservation project

He also reached the finals of the new Mammal Champions award set up by the Mammal Society to mark its 70th anniversary.

"It was a fantastic opportunity," he said.

"I got to go up on stage alongside His Royal Highness Prince Edward and talk about the work we're doing here at the university.

"Hedgehogs are currently decreasing in population numbers, so it's important to try and increase that."

The 26-year-old from Grange-over-Sands spent 18 months building and leading the team of 170 volunteers that make up the Hedgehog Friendly Campus Project at the university.

As part of their work, the students put cameras around the site to allow the conservationists to see what the hedgehogs got up to after dark.

Katie Whitfield said their footage is shared with Chester Zoo

Project coordinator Katie Whitfield said the team amassed a huge collection of images tracing the movements of the university's spiky inhabitants.

"We do it to keep track of the hedgehog population on campus to make sure the work we're doing is actually benefiting them [and to see] if the population is rising," she said.

"We also use the footage for the Hedgehog Watch, which is part of Chester Zoo's initiative."

Chester Zoo said hedgehog populations are declining at a rapid rate, due to a number of threats including changes in the way built-up areas are managed, increased traffic on roads and intensive farming.

People are being encouraged to monitor their local hedgehog population by putting motion-sensing cameras in their gardens. The footage is then collected and fed into the zoo's research.

The students have placed a number of hedgehog houses throughout the campus

Lyndon is due to graduate this summer, but he is staying on to do a masters at Chester, and will be able to keep a close eye on the hedgehogs for longer.

"We're really proud of students like Lyndon and Katie for the work they're doing," Dr Krista McLennan, head of the School for Natural Sciences at Chester University said.

"They're using the skills and the knowledge that they're learning here at the university and putting it into practice."