Once the witches and wizards of Halloween have flown off for another year, people’s attention turns to the next big annual event in the calendar… Bonfire Night.

Conservation charity Northumberland Wildlife Trust is issuing its annual plea for everybody to put hedgehog spotting on their checklist before lighting their bonfires and setting off their rockets.

As the weather is turning colder, wetter, darker and windier, it’s the time that hedgehogs start looking for places to hibernate and, to our little prickly friends, an unlit bonfire is equivalent to a five-star hotel!

The wildlife charity is advising people to help protect hedgehogs by following seven simple tips to avoid harming them in a bonfire pile:

• If possible, build it on the same day it is to be lit. The longer it’s left for, the more likely it is that a hedgehog will wander in. Hedgehogs can walk up to 3km in one night, so it is worth constantly checking for one moving in.
• If you have stored materials for your bonfire outdoors then move them to a different patch of ground.
• Always place the bonfire on open ground - never on a pile of leaves as a hedgehog may be hiding underneath.
• Always check the entire bonfire for hedgehogs before lighting it. They tend to hide in the centre and bottom two feet in particular. 
• When checking, lift parts of the bonfire section by section using a pole or broom. Do not use a fork, spade or rake as this may injure a hedgehog.
• Use a torch to look inside the bonfire and listen for a hissing sound, as this is the noise that hedgehogs make when they are disturbed or distressed.
• Always light your bonfire from one corner, rather than in the centre, in order to give hedgehogs a chance to escape if they need to.  

If anybody does find a hedgehog they should move it slowly and calmly, picking it up with gardening gloves, along with any nesting material it may have been sitting in, and placing it in a cardboard box lined with newspaper.

The box should then be relocated to a safe location that is far from any fires or wait until the bonfire is over and dampen down the fire site with water before releasing the hedgehog under a bush or a log pile. It may seem a nuisance to do this but hedgehog numbers are in serious decline.

Geoff Dobbins, Northumberland Wildlife Trust Estates Officer Manager says:

“To a hedgehog looking for a place to sleep, an unlit bonfire is a ready-made bed.  We are urging people to give inspecting their bonfires top priority before lighting them.  It only takes a minute to do but can save hundreds of hedgehogs from an unnecessary death.

He continued: “Hedgehogs are great friends to gardeners as they are natural pest killers, so let’s do all we can to help them.”