HEDGEHOGS are under threat because our modern gardens are too tidy.

Numbers of the animals dropped by a quarter in the past decade, partly because people are laying fashionable decking and patios which ruin the natural habitat.

Hedgehogs travel a mile each night to gather food and find a mate, but fences and walls stop them roaming.

The most up-to-date figures show numbers fell from 30 million in the 1950s to 1.5 million in 1995.

Faye Vass, chief executive of the British Hedgehog ­Preservation Society, said: “Gardens have become far too tidy, paved over for parking, or enclosed within impenetrable fences or walls.”

People are urged to help by providing hedgehog houses, leaving rough patches for shelter and planting hedges instead of fences or walls.

Ms Vass added: “Relatively simple actions will ensure the survival of these increasingly threatened creatures.”