Wild Hedgehog Conservation Welfare

Hedgehog population decline has been driven by habitat loss, fragmentation, and road mortality, with direct welfare implications for surviving individuals in degraded landscapes.

Key Facts

UK hedgehog population has declined from approximately 30 million in the 1950s to under 1 million today
Road mortality accounts for approximately 100,000-335,000 hedgehog deaths annually
Garden habitat connects to wider landscape through hedgehog highway schemes
Slug pellets containing metaldehyde and methiocarb cause hedgehog poisoning deaths
Hedgehog Street has facilitated millions of garden corridor improvements across the UK

Welfare Considerations

Hedgehog welfare is shaped by the quality of the landscape individual animals inhabit. A hedgehog in a habitat-poor area with limited corridors must travel further to find food, increasing road crossing frequency and road mortality risk. Animals entering autumn in poor body condition from inadequate food resources face starvation during hibernation. The cumulative welfare cost of these landscape-scale deprivations is borne by individual animals experiencing real physiological stress and injury. Garden-level interventions - hedgehog highways, food and water provision, pesticide reduction - provide genuine welfare benefit to individual animals within local populations.

What You Can Do

Install a hedgehog highway in your fence and encourage neighbours to do the same
Provide supplementary food and water during dry summers and pre-hibernation autumn
Check bonfires and leaf piles before lighting - hedgehogs use them as hibernation sites
Avoid slug pellets and other pesticides that harm hedgehogs and their invertebrate prey