ー英会話講師の英語日記ー　札幌英会話スクールSTEP UP（札幌駅、大通駅徒歩５分）

Decline in hedgehogs

2018年6月22日 (金)

Hello everyone. When I was growing up in the UK, I often saw hedgehogs. I just adore them. From the age for 14, I worked as a paper girl, so I had to wake up at around 6am and deliver newspapers on my bicycle. It was around this time that the hedgehogs were often out playing in the grass on the sides of the roads. One thing that I noticed last time I went home was that I didn’t see any hedgehogs. Where have they all gone??  I read today that the number of hedgehogs have fallen by half in recent years. When I was younger I often would see squashed hedgehogs on the road (its a sad truth that for all their speed,when a car comes on the road, they freeze and usually get run over). This slaughter seemed to be just a fact of life and the months to follow the hedgehog population would grow again and spring to life.

I have never thought that these prickly totoros would become extinct because there used to be so many of them but now the hedgerows are lost, farming eats up their habitat, and pesticides kill off their food supply. The future is looking quite bleak. I am going to do what I can to reverse the hedgehog`s decline. They are an irreplaceable link in the interdependent chain of our natural world. I hope that everyone will try and save the wildlife for future generations