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  • Okay, so this is pre Cole Kidman, my hedgehog, who I've had for about five years.

  • Unfortunately for her, she'd been hit by a car and as a consequence of injury to her head to attain an eye out.

  • And she's also lost a leg.

  • But nevertheless, she is a fit and healthy.

  • Hegel, Britain's best loved mammal, is facing a huge crisis, its population at an all time low.

  • How often do people now see a Deadhead jog on the road?

  • Not very often, but it's not that long ago that head jobs were actually used in road safety.

  • Adverts for Children you know they used to be seen everywhere is don't get squashed like a hedgehog.

  • If you don't look, it end up getting hurt.

  • Head chokes are disappearing at an astonishing rate.

  • In 1950 it's estimated there were 36 million in the UK, but that number had plummeted to just 1.5 million by the mid nineties on, the freefall has continued.

  • There's now only thought to be 500,000 left.

  • That's a staggering drop of almost 99%.

  • A new report out today may explain why data suggests at least 100,000 hedgehogs are killed every year on Britain's roads.

  • This map illuminates each head choke fatality.

  • The brighter the area, the more deaths in that location revealing deadly rings around cities and towns.

  • Yeah, busy roads in suburban areas that going out of town, uh, are the areas where we have the most special road kills.

  • And it's only gonna get worse because traffic is predicted to increase by about 50% by 2050.

  • Mapping the roadkill has shown that the deaths of concentrated on just 1/10 of all roads.

  • Here's a prime example where we've got a busy road surrounded by some lovely head joke habitat.

  • We've got some nice head rose back gardens and so on and hedgerows air coming out and going basically straight under the wheels of a passing car.

  • What could we do about that?

  • Well, one suggestion is that we notice how cars often accelerate when they're coming out of speed restricted areas on.

  • So if we could simply extend the speed restriction a little bit, maybe by 1/4 of a mile to see how it guns, that would give our head jokes a fighting chance.

  • This is Lottie Lottie came in two nights ago, she was actually picked up on a very busy road with steam rolled up in the castle you killed up in her bed.

  • Here she's court flat.

  • I mean, he's not very well.

  • Hey, chalk.

  • Hospitals like this one in Shropshire are often run by volunteers here, the nurse up to 400 a year.

  • This is the hospital where we do the intensive care where we give all the medicines we do the injections.

  • Any first aid?

  • Funny guy.

  • I just lost them Just the most beautiful little animals.

  • Most road accidents involving drugs are fatal, unfortunately, But you know, it's not just an adult joke that's going to suffer for being hit on the road.

  • It's it's the babies that are left behind as well, and if they're found, that's lucky for them.

  • But if they're not, then you've lost not just one hitch, but a whole family.

  • The hospital licious part of Laclos, plans to become a hey chalk friendly town residents there, desperately trying to slow down the decline.

  • We decided we would create our own sign, asked residents put up on their fences or they're walls or their their verge on try and raise raise awareness for people who were driving around town.

  • I think we're just coming up here to a sign that some residents have put up for us.

  • I spent a lot of Children now don't see them only see pictures off them.

  • And it's very sad that so many of the things that we all took for granted I just don't want a challenge now.

  • And if the hedgehogs are taken for granted much longer, there's fears it will be too late.

  • When you think about it, what right have we got to make any animal go extinct?

  • You know, we tend to think about these things is all happening a long way away there in Africa or they're in Borneo.

  • But no, actually, it's right here in our very own back gardens under our noses.

  • We're managing to send one of our best love creatures to extinction.

Okay, so this is pre Cole Kidman, my hedgehog, who I've had for about five years.

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