Our history
The Wildlife One society was founded in 2018 as a local community-based Initiative in the heart of greater manchester, with a vision to help as many Hedgehogs survive as possible. In 2019. we went regional with our Help the Hedgehogs drive and now, five years since its inception, Wildlife One has grown to a nationwide Charity providing education, local conservation schemes and a voice for conservation across the United Kingdom. Keep reading to understand the extent of our Journey…
Helping Hedgehogs
The origins of our organisation lie in a small community based initiative created by our current director, driving force, and founder, alexander Howson. Recognising that hedgehogs were dying at an alarming rate within his local community, he launched the Tameside hedgehog drive at the age of twenty. Bringing together a team of local volunteers, the project built and gave away over 200 hedgehog homes and distributed thousands of pieces of information on how the community could aid hedgehogs. The scheme was roaring success and wildlife one was officially formed to keep the project going. 2019 saw a subsequent role out of the scheme with local school and colleagues signing up to partake in educational talks and include the project within their woodwork curriculums.
Unfortunately, the covid-19 pandemic stalled a lot of Society’s progress for 2020 and 2021. However, wildlife one persisted with its information distribution and its efforts to involve and educate local communities.
Now, in 2022, the hedgehog drive is back and bigger than ever with a national focus. Our director is travelling the country giving free conservation talks to local schools and communities, we have produced free lesson plans for key stage one & two, and we’re carrying on with our free hedgehog box distribution scheme. Click on our great British hedgehog drive page to discover more…
Educating communities
The Wildlife One Society was always about tackling local grassroots education around conservation, and being practical about the ways Individual and Communities can be involved in animal Welfare and Preserving the natural order. Alongside our more conventional conservation schemes, since 2019, Wildlife One has Regularly published conservation news, articles educating the public on diffrent wildlife species, and held talks on wildlife.
Many of our volunteers are also involved in education, and part of our directors Wildlife One 2022 directive has been to get our content regularly taught in schools, and to provide free educational packs to local community projects such as guides, scouts, cadets and local community centres.
Preventing Pesticides in public spaces
Launching in 2020, one of the very few positives from the lockdown, was the benefits saw by wildlife. A big part of this was the due to the cutbacks in pollution, and the lack of pesticides used in public areas. Alexander Howson had already spent a great deal of time petitioning for the removal of pesticides in green spaces around Manchester, having partook in several marches and protests. However, the lockdown gave the wildlife one the evidence it needed and since then we have been asking local organisations such as municipal councils, housing associations and local landowners to commit to green initiatives which see them cutback on pesticide use. In 2021, this was dubbed our ppips policy and we began our scheme of empowering and arming local constituents with the tools and knowledge to pressure their local organisations to become more green and cutback on pesticides. Go to our prevention of pesticides page to find out how you can get involved and help your local wildlife survive the age of pesticides.
Saving Dogs in cars
Set to officially launch mid-September 2022, this years hot summer has seen countless news stories of dogs dying in hot cars due to negligent owners. We believe that something needs to be done to deter people from even attempting to leave dogs in cars during the hottest periods of the year. Click on our Protect the nation's pets campaign and sign the government petition to help us make it illegal.