A birthday for England’s St Tiggywinkles

Published 2008

St Tiggywinkles, the hospital for wild animals established in England by 1990 Laureate Les Stocker and his wife Sue, will celebrate its 30th anniversary in March this year, with a major event to be held in June. The “hospital” began life in 1978 as a shed at the back of the Stockers’ house in Aylesbury, when Les Stocker was a full-time accountant, giving assistance to any animal, particularly hedgehogs, that neighbours brought to him. His commitment to providing first aid for wild animals took over his life in the years that followed. Since 1991, St Tiggywinkles has been located in a purpose-built complex in the village of Haddenham, in Buckinghamshire, near London.

Stocker estimates that in the past 30 years he and his staff have given first aid to 150, 000 wild animals, the vast majority of them British species, but also imported species from wallabies to pythons.

As well as caring for the patients at St Tiggywinkles, with help from 25 full-time staff and 20 animal-welfare students, Stocker also writes books on caring for wild animals and answers questions on animal first aid from around the world. And he devises new treatments and remedies, often in consultation with expert veterinary surgeons.

Stocker is not a vet, but 30 years of providing treatment for animals have made him a world expert, highly respected by professional veterinary organisations. In 2007, for example, he presented a workshop entitled “Dealing with the Wildlife Casualty on Admittance” at the annual congress of the British Veterinary Nurses Association.

In other developments, Stocker is proud of a new Red Kite aviary (20 metres long and 4m high), opened in November 2007 at St Tiggywinkles. “We are now seeing a lot of casualties of this very important bird that has been reintroduced to England,” he says.

He is also very pleased to report good news for the animal that launched him on his quest in the 1970s, the hedgehog. “In 2007, after four years of negotiations and meetings, a colleague and I managed to persuade Scottish National Heritage, the government body responsible for Scottish wildlife, to halt a cull of the hedgehogs on the Outer Hebridean islands of Uist. This follows on from a Ph.D. that I sponsored at Bristol University proving that translocation to the mainland is practical.” Stocker developed a translocation protocol that is being used to relocate the animals.

Stocker has also become a “more or less professional photographer”, supplying photos to Oxford Scientific which specialises in photographs of the natural world.

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