Hedgehogs: Conservation

(asked on 8th March 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he is taking to protect the UK's hedgehog population.


Answered by
Rebecca Pow Portrait
Rebecca Pow
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This question was answered on 16th March 2021

The Environment Bill contains measures that will help improve the status of threatened species, including by setting at least one biodiversity target in law, as well as strengthening the biodiversity duty on public authorities to take action to conserve and enhance biodiversity.

We are also taking action, through our net gain provisions in the Bill, to support the role of new development in helping protect and create the habitat that our native species, including hedgehogs, need to thrive.

We are working with stakeholders and end users to determine the specific actions that will be paid for under our new schemes that reward environmental land management. We will set out more details on this later this year. The Agricultural Transition Plan set out examples of the types of actions that we envisage paying for under the schemes, including creating, managing and restoring habitats such as woodland, heathland and species-rich grassland, which could all benefit species such as hedgehog.

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