Join the first study of its kind: a multi-city investigation into the habits of Britain's charismatic animal urbanites.
If you live in a city, you know that urban areas are full of wild creatures. You also know that sharing space with animals can cause problems: tipped-over trash cans, bites out of the basil, and more serious issues like disease.
Join our researchers in one of the cities where they're working, Brighton, to find out how we can live in better balance with the mammals who share our urban space. You'll specifically focus on the whereabouts and well-being of three common English city-dwellers: hedgehogs, foxes, and badgers. With a better understanding of why urban animal populations thrive or decline, the scientists can help conserve declining species (the hedgehog) and figure out how to mitigate conflicts with others (the fox and the badger).
This is your chance to become acquainted with creatures who may have been mere strangers until now. You'll set up and check camera traps to see what animals appear when no one is looking, and explore green spaces for signs of fox and badger dens. You'll also check for hedgehogs in gardens by monitoring tracking tunnels, which capture footprints as animals walk through them. And you'll get to know some of the human inhabitants of these cities as well—you'll ask residents about sightings and their perceptions of the study species.