Supermodel and fashion icon Twiggy, who has a home near Southwold, has made a passionate plea for “everyone to do everything they can” to help hedgehogs as part of an awareness week.
The 1960s fashion icon, whose face adorned the cover of magazines such as Vogue, Elle and Tatler for decades, posted the video on Twitter as part of British Hedgehog Awareness Week.
Twiggy, officially known as Dame Lesley Lawson after being named in the Queen’s New Year Honours List last year, is a patron for the British Hedgehog Preservation Society.
“I absolutely adore hedgehogs and always have,” she told the society’s website.
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However, the Suffolk Wildlife Trust says hedgehog populations have been undergoing “concerning declines”, with more than 50% lost in the past two decades in rural areas.
In 2016, the trust even launched a bid to make Ipswich the UK’s most hedgehog-friendly town.
As such, the British Hedgehog Preservation Society “aims to highlight the problems hedgehogs face and how you can help them” during the awareness week, which runs until May 9.
In her Twitter video, Twiggy said she was proud to be a patron of the society and added: “We want everyone to do everything they can to help these wonderful creatures.”
And she had some advice for those wanting to help – namely to make a “hedgehog highway” or furrow in their fences, saying: “It will let these lovely little hedgehogs come and go.
“If you can do that it, it would be fabulous, so they don’t get trapped.”
She signed off by saying: “I hope you’re staying safe and well and all our lovely little hedgehogs have a happy week.”
After becoming an icon of Swinging London in the 1960s, Twiggy – now aged 70 – also topped the music charts with hits such as Here I Go Again and starred in Hollywood films.
She famously relaunched her modelling career in 2005, after a chance meeting with a Marks and Spencer executive in The Crown pub, in Southwold.
British Hedgehog Preservation Society chief executive, Fay Vass, said: “Our gardens take up such a lot of habitat, and by getting together with neighbours to ensure hedgehogs have access points and hedgehog friendly features in the garden, we can open up a really useful amount of habitat for them.”
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