World Animal Day – Hedgehogs on Campus
Last week, we celebrated World Animal Day through a volunteer event lead by Alexandria, our very own VP Community and Wellbeing. Over the course of two days, we set up Hedgehog tracker tunnels and cameras across the Liverpool John Moores University campuses, with the help of Dr Julia Nowack. Our aim was to hopefully see these little creatures in action and identify where abouts they built their homes.
Day one saw a successful start, our volunteers were very dedicated to the cause, with one even climbing into a bush to locate the camera in the hope of capturing some wildlife.
This initiative was part of Alexandria’s manifesto points. “Making the campuses at LJMU more sustainable and wildlife friendly… is very exciting for me. I’m hoping that as a result of this project we will be able to continue to monitor hedgehog activity and help improve their habitats. LJMU currently has Bronze status for being a Hedgehog Friendly Campus, so hopefully we can get to Silver status one day!’
The results
We came back that Friday, gathered the tunnels and cameras and all eagerly waited for Dr Nowack to play the recordings to see if we had succeeded. Unfortunately, we had not managed to record any Hedgehogs, but we did get some great wildlife footage; especially that of a young fox strolling about at the John Lennon Art Building gardens.
Overall, this experience was great and led to some students expressing interest in the Hedgehog Friendly Campus society, which hopefully means we will be back doing this again soon.
Next steps
A huge thank you to Alexandria and Dr Julia Nowack for organising this event. If you would like to get involved with this project, you can start your very own hedgehog friendly campus society with us today – we will help you with all the materials you may need, as well as provide you with some amazing volunteering hours to pop on your CV – you never know, you may even win a volunteering award at one of our most prestigious events – our Society and Volunteering Awards.
✍ Maddy Pedley, JMSU Content Creator
