Hugh Warwick says there’s a lot more to hedgehogs than just prickles

Hedgehogs, hedgehogs, hedgehogs…some people think that is all I ever talk about. And there is some justification for this misapprehension. I have written two books about hedgehogs after all, and done loads of media work promoting their cause.

I’ve also developed the most niche of stand-up routines based entirely around hedgehogs – I did three nights at the Bloomsbury Theatre with comedian Robin Ince.

But there is more to me than just prickles. What I spend most of my time talking about is our relationship with nature and as I’m involved in the fifth Oxford Festival of Nature, it is no surprise that I am busy.

I talk about some of the extraordinary wildlife experts and eccentrics I have met over the years. It is amazing how many experts and eccentrics there are in Oxford. It must be why I feel so at home.

Yesterday I was in Waterstones talking about…hedgehogs. I have been doing talks like this for 15 years and often get asked if I get bored. Well, for a start, every talk is different. But mainly the reason I keep going is because the reaction I get from every audience is always so thrilling and energising.

You see hedgehogs are the perfect animal – everyone has a story about hedgehogs, everyone knows what they look like and everyone, or at least nearly everyone, loves them. This means that when I want to talk about the hard stuff, like habitat fragmentation and the impact of changing farming practices on the natural world, I have a way in.

Even the new book I am writing, while not really about hedgehogs, has their interests at heart. Because once you start to look at the world from a hedgehog’s point of view you will see what stress and strain so much other wildlife suffers as well.

So many measures of the quality of our natural world are based on animals that fly – birds, bees, butterflies and bats. I am also fascinated by how little attention is paid to the creatures that creep and crawl, as these are the ones most affected by the changes we have made to the environment.

One of the projects I am most proud of is called Hedgehog Street – and it tackles this very issue, getting people to connect their gardens via small holes so that wildlife can benefit not just from your own garden, but the surroundings ones too.

Underneath it all I am an ecologist and an environmentalist. I believe we have a real duty to share the love we have for the natural world in the hope that other people start to take action themselves.

This is perfectly captured by the late American writer Stephen Jay Gould who said “We will not fight to save what we do not love.” I aim to act as an introduction agency – wildlife dating! I want to introduce people to the great potential there is out there for wildlife to lure us into a closer relationship, to lift us from apathy, through liking and on to love.

On Saturday, as part of the Wild Fair, I will be taking this message to the most important audience – children – at the Natural History Museum in Oxford. I have a simple stall – I am not keen on having live hedgehogs at events, they are nocturnal and shy creatures who prefer a life out of the limelight – but I bring a large block of quick-drying clay and a bag of twigs.

From this, children and adults magic up the most delightful hedgehogs – and while they sculpt, we talk. I get a chance to seed the importance of love and respect of the natural world with the very best teachers any parent could ever have. I know it works. I have met parents who have been changed by their children and begun to reconsider the way they interact with nature.