Hedgehog records 2005-2006: Hogwatch and Rural Landowner surveys

Quality Control

Records are submitted voluntarily by members of the public with a wide range of expertise. Sightings were not verified although the risk of misidentification is low for this species. The dataset should not be regarded as having a comprehensive geographical coverage, record distribution is likely to be biased towards populated areas. The dataset has been checked using the NBN record cleaner and as a result erroneous grid references were corrected or removed.

Method steps

1. Data were captured mainly via a public-participation survey. Volunteers submitted records of any hedgehog sightings from the previous year (dead or alive) using a standard form. Some additional records were added via a targetted landowner survey, again using a standard form and asking about sightings within the past year. As the hedgehog is an easily identified species records were only excluded if the location details were not clear or obviously incorrect.

UK-wide. As the majority of the dataset was generated by volunteers and hedgehogs are most commonly observed in people's gardens or on roads the occurrence of records is likely to be biased towards populated areas. Most data were submitted with a postocde as the location, which were then converted to British National Grid format. As such data have been submitted at 1km resolution as greater accuracy cannot be assured.