The Vale Local Nature Partnership (VLNP) has launched a pilot scheme on a Penarth housing estate to save the area's hedgehogs.

'Penarth Hedgehog Street' - funded by a Welsh Government grant - encourages residents to create portals in their garden fences or walls to enable the safe passage of this precipitously declining British icon.

If they wish, partakers can then borrow tracker cameras and footprint tunnels to monitor and record the local hedgehog population.

The number of hedgehogs in the UK is thought to have fallen by 30% in urban areas since the Millennium.

There is no single cause for the decline, but experts believe habitat fragmentation is among the most detrimental factors.

Healthy hedgehogs travel between one and two miles every night in search of food and potential mates. With their movement restricted by man made obstacles, they are forced to go hungry and often inbreed.

Desperate hedgehogs sometimes take to crossing roads, where 335,000 of them are killed every year.

VLNP chose a housing estate in Lower Penarth, adjacent to Penarth Cemetery, for the pilot scheme.

It includes Castle Avenue, Britten Road, Elgar Road, Coates Road, Sullivan Close, Purcell Road, Handel Close, Byrd Crescent and Dowland Road.

Eight households have signed up so far. Among them is Sullivan Close resident and Vale of Glamorgan Council graphic designer Hywel Thomas.

Hywel suggested the project to the VLNP after borrowing a tracker camera from Cosmeston Lakes to observe the wildlife in his nature friendly garden.

"I borrowed a camera from Cosmeston out of interest to see what was in the garden, because we had seen foxes out there before," he told Nub News.

"We saw the foxes and then there were also these hedgehogs."

After researching similar projects elsewhere, Hywel installed two semicircular holes - roughly the size of half a CD - in opposite ends of his garden.

He is now visited on a nightly basis by three free-roaming hedgehogs.

"We love seeing them," he continued. "It's made a huge difference over the COVID thing when we've been stuck in our houses.

"Knowing that there are animals out there in the garden has been brilliant. And you can't beat a hedgehog."

Hywel records the visitations using a VLNP-provided tracker camera and footprint tunnels - whereby hedgehogs tread in ink and leave their footprints on a strip of paper.

Emily Shaw, VLNP Co-ordinator, says the data will be used to form a better understanding of hedgehog populations in Wales:

"Apart from helping the hedgehogs on the estate travel freely, we also want to encourage people to record the number of sightings so we can collect data to inform future conservation projects.

"We'll then send all that data to the Local Environmental Record Centre, and they'll use that data to inform projects in local government with Natural Resource Wales.

She hopes the project will bring the community together in pursuit of this worthy goal.

"Once we get started giving people cameras, more and people will get interested in what their neighbours are doing. We hope a little community will form around it.

"Even if the camera trap doesn't pick up any hedgehogs, you will definitely see some other wildlife and it helps you engage with and teach yourself about local wildlife."

For information on how to enrol in the scheme, follow this link.

The VLNP is also holding an online talk on the 27th May with Stephen Powles, who set up a very successful 'hedgehog superhighways' scheme in a small village in Oxfordshire.

Get your free ticket HERE.