A wildlife charity seeking to protect native hedeghog populations in decline in the UK is calling for support to afford their nests legal protection.

Hedgehogs are already protected by law, but a petition calling for measures to protect their nesting sites too has received 92,000 signatures to date.

The threshold for a parliamentary debate is 100,000 signatures minimum.

Secret World Wildlife Rescue in Somerset said building housing estates was threatening hedgehog habitats.

Pauline Kidner from the charity said: “When you see the large amounts of housing estates that are going up and all these fences built with cement bases, it means that these animals, wherever they are, lose their foraging [space] and they’re unable to move from one garden to the next.”

She said foraging space and the ability to move about with freedom was “so important” for hedgehogs to be able to survive.

Hedeghog numbers have fallen by up to 50% in rural areas since 2000, according to one report, and they are registered as vulnerable to extinction on the Red List for Britain’s mammals.

A wild grey seal (Halichoerus grypus) has been caught “clapping” on camera for the first time, making sounds that resemble “shotgun-like cracks”.

The large male was filmed striking its flippers together off the coast of the Farne Islands, near Northumberland, during the breeding season in 2017.

While captive seals can be seen clapping in zoos and aquariums, scientists say this is the first time one of their wild counterparts has been caught on camera performing the action.

While humans clap to applaud or express approval, in the case of wild grey seals , this gesture signifies quite the opposite.

Scientists believe male seals clap to demonstrate their strength, as part of an attempt to ward off competitors and attract potential mates. The action produces a “loud high-frequency noise”, sending out “a clear signal” to other males in the area.

In the video, the male seal can be seen swimming close to a female, with other males lurking nearby, before it starts clapping.

Dr Ben Burville, a researcher at the University of Newcastle, who took the footage, said: “The effect of the clap was instant and the rival males rapidly dispersed.

“The clap was incredibly loud and at first I found it hard to believe what I had seen.”

Labour has unveiled plans to double the number of police officers tasked with enforcing the fox hunting ban and other wildlife crimes.

The party says it will put £4.5m into cracking down on bloodsports like hare coursing, badger baiting and stag hunting.

The number of officers in rural crimes units across the country would rise from 88 to 170 under the proposals in the party’s animal welfare manifesto, which is being released on Tuesday.

Other policies included in the document include closing loopholes in the 2004 Hunting Act that allow in practice illegal hunts to continue.

They would remove exemptions such as hunts being allowed for “research and observation” and on the “use of dogs below ground to protect birds for shooting”.

For decades, reports of big cats have surfaced all over Britain – from Crystal Palace to Cornwall to Carlisle. There have been 155 big cat sightings reported to UK police forces in the past three years, according to forces responding to FOI requests. There are likely many more never recorded. Local newspapers publish dozens of eyewitness reports every year, and have helped to firmly establish certain creatures – the Surrey Puma, the Beast of Exmoor – in local legend.

Where might these cats have come from? One theory suggests they were released by their owners in the months leading up to the 1976 Dangerous Wild Animals Act. Exotic animals had been sold in Harrods; cheetahs could occasionally be seen being walked in Hyde Park. Given the choice of acquiring a costly licence or relinquishing their pets to animal sanctuaries, at least some owners chose a third option: sending cats out into the wild. In 2000, Leslie Maiden, a lion tamer known as One-Eyed Nick, told the Birmingham Post he’d released a panther and a puma in Derbyshire some 25 years before. 

“At first I was a bit worried about how they would get on,” he said. “But I went up to the moors a few weeks later and saw bones of sheep and pheasants, so I think they adapted pretty well.”

Chris Packham, the television presenter and naturalist, has accused a property developer of setting “wildlife traps” after it covered a hedgerow in netting on a site earmarked for 40 new homes.

The conservationist has joined local campaigners in condemning a move by Partner Construction to prevent birds nesting on rural land in Lincolnshire where the company has applied to build a new housing estate.

Pictures and a video have been posted online of the netting apparently trapping birds in what they called an “unnecessary attack on the natural world”.

The netting was set up on a long stretch of hedgerow in an attempt to prevent birds nesting, and consequently potentially halting until Autumn any construction.

He wrote: “It’s so utterly abhorrent that I feel sick. What has become of the agencies who should protect life from this? Is everything spent?”

He added that “if I were there I would rip those nets down. Do it.”

A mystery activist has now removed some of the netting, with the developers claiming whoever vandalised the mesh is responsible for any birds becoming trapped.

Campaigners are angry that the netting was installed before North Lincolnshire Council has ruled on whether the development should even go ahead.