During summer (year 2000), from the initiative of the Department of environment, Umea community,
special project has been started to make Umea inhabitants
(110 000 people) living closer to the nature. Part of this project
covered inventarization of wild life in the city, and a part of
this wild life are of course hedgehogs.
Hedgehogs has been counted in chosen areas of Umea, which represent
strictly industrial area, living quarters and the centrum.
To mark hedgehogs a special permission has been obtained, since a hedgehog is
an animal under protection in Sweden. Marking was done to help in
identification and counting of hedgehogs in the chosen area. We used a
red paint for marking pigs, which was going away with the rain after two
weeks (you can see marks of this paint on the bottom spines of the hedgehog on
this photo).
To do the counting Anders from the Department of environment
in Umea prepared a route through chosen areas, which was followed for some evenings.
I have joined the counting on Alidhem living area as a volunteer. This living quarter
is situated on the edge of the Umea, with lots of grass lawns and bushes,
as well as lots of people (around 15000).
It was interesting to see the same hedgehogs showing up in the same
places during the nights we have been counting them. Obviously they were
following their chosen route as we did. We stopped the counting when no
more new hedgehogs have been marked for some nights.