By Amaya, age 10
When I go out, I see more houses are being built and more green spaces are being taken over. This is having an impact on wildlife as they struggle to find food and shelter. This impacts several animals – for example hedgehog numbers are reducing, and their population is being threatened. Dormice are losing their natural environments as people remove hedges and trees.
One day I was helping to take the recycled items to the recycling bin and looking at them, I came up with ideas on how we could reuse them to help our wildlife and the planet.
Examples of my ideas are below:
To help hedgehogs, we can do the following things.
Wildlife homes
Make hedgehog houses out of old plastic plant pots. To do this you need to mark where you want the door to be. With the plant pot upside down use scissors or a saw to cut out a door. Then find somewhere quiet in the garden to place it over some straw and leaves for bedding. If there are any holes on the top, then you should cover these as they will let the rain in.
You can also help them by checking your garden before cutting the grass, and could also leave a pile of clippings as somewhere quiet for them to go.
You can put dry dog/cat food or hedgehog food and water into clean yoghurt pots, butter tubs or the hedgehog houses you made from plant pots into your garden, which will help the hedgehogs.
It is important that you do not give hedgehogs pumpkins, bread, big chunks of meat or milk as these can make them ill.
To help dormice we can do the following:
I heard that at the Wimbledon Tennis tournament they helped dormice by donating tennis balls to have them made into houses for them. So, I have made some for around our area with tennis balls we had. To make these you need to make a hole in the tennis ball and then place the ball in a tree or hedge but make sure the ball is off the ground.
Bird-feeders from recycled items
To help birds we can do the following things:
We can make bird feeders out of various recycled items. These are toilet rolls that you can put peanut butter on, and then roll them into bird seeds, using string to hang them up. Pinecones are also good to use.
You can also use yoghurt pots by adding a peanut butter and bird seed mixture into the pot, adding string on it to hang them up.
An egg box can be used to make bird feeders. All you need to do is cut the top from the bottom and then put string either side. Then hang them where you want them to go and add the bird food into it.
Plastic or cardboard milk cartons make good bird feeders as most people will have them. To do this you need to make doors either side of the container by cutting them out. Then get some small sticks to put under the door hole. Use some string to hang them up, and its then ready to place bird food into the feeder.
Remember! When making any of these you may need help from a grown up.
By doing these simple things we can together help wildlife and our planet by reusing recyclable items.
Amaya can be found on Instagram and YouTube.
Share this article on Bluesky
