Â鶹ԼÅÄ

Steve Brown investigates why our endangered hedgehogs are in more trouble than ever. At the Oak and Furrows Rescue Centre in Cricklade, staff are dealing with a record number of waifs and strays – too tiny and too hungry to survive winter in the wild. Increasingly unpredictable and turbulent weather is taking its toll on these adorable little creatures. The summer heatwave of 2018 depleted the hedgehogs’ usual diet of worms and slugs, a mild Autumn and Winter interfered with their usual hibernation patterns. Their plight is so dire that some experts are predicting they could vanish from our countryside in ten years’ time. Nobody wants that to happen so Steve wants to know how we can all do our bit to help.

Ìý

Paul Martin meets top psychologist Linda Blair to learn how we can beat the winter blues which affect one in three of us. The countryside could be our best bet as the great outdoors is the perfect medicine cabinet. But, back from a bracing walk with Paul, Linda shares some secrets from what we eat to how we breathe to help perk up our happy hormones. And Paul investigates special lighting which can quickly drive away those winter blues.

In the Scottish Highlands, Keeley Donovan finds out how Hamish – the first polar bear to be born in the UK for 25 years – is coping with a warm winter and how hopes for the future of his species rest on his young shoulders. She’s also on the trail of the Capercaillie – one of Britain’s most curious and rarest bird on the verge of extinction.

Ìý

The Peak District moors are very popular with the people of Manchester and Sheffield. But the proximity to these industrial powerhouses has, over the centuries, caused catastrophic damage to the blanket bogs on the tops. Now a new project aims to protect and restore the blanket bog on the moors of the Peak district and the South Pennines by damming gullies and re-introducing sphagnum mosses. Matt Baker meets Brendon Wittram from Moors for the Future to find out about the problem before donning a new bit of kit to help in the restoration efforts.

Margherita Taylor discovers how rubbish could be the answer to the UK’s housing crisis as she visits the Waste House at Brighton University where tutors and students are experimenting with everything from builders’ rubble to cast-off denims and duvets to create a blueprint for our homes of the future. Houses like this could also save our landfill crisis at a time when the UK is running out of space and already exporting millions of tonnes of rubbish overseas.