AN animal campaigner from Dalton has urged people in the Furness area to sign a petition to force politicians in Westminster to debate the worrying decline in the number of hedgehogs.

Irene Cannon, 75, who runs Furness Hedgehog Rescue in Dalton, has been caring for injured hogs for the past 10 years.

She is desperate for people to show more care and consideration towards our prickly friends and has been on a one-woman mission to encourage people to sign the petition.

It's currently been signed by 37,000 people but it needs 100,000 signatures for it to stand a chance of being debated in parliament.

She said: "I want everybody in Furness to sign it. I want to get 1,000 signatures on my own but if I could get 20,000 then that would make my day."

"I absolutely love them and I get quite emotional thinking about it. They are such gentle little things but they've got everything going against them."

As well as signing the petition, Mrs Cannon wants to warn people about the dangers of using slug pellets on their lawns as they can poison hedgehogs.

She said: "There are so many other ways that people can kill slugs without damaging other forms of wildlife.

"I wish they were banned - people don't realise that by buying slug pellets they are killing everything in their garden, including endangered species such as hedgehogs."

A recent survey by the RSPB revealed that the number of people seeing hedgehogs once a month has fallen to just 25 per cent compared to 38 per cent in 2014.

It has been suggested that hedgehogs could disappear from our countrysides in just 10 years' time but Mrs Cannon thinks that getting MPs to discuss it in parliament can help to alleviate the problem.

She said: "It's one step at a time, but getting it to parliament would be seen as a signficant amount of progress.

"The badgers are protected, but we need to get some protection for these hogs as well."

To sign the petition to give hedgehogs better legal protection, you can visit www.petition.parliament.uk/petitions/121264