Urban Wildlife Corridors and Connectivity

Urban wildlife corridors — connected strips of habitat through cities and towns — allow animals to move between green spaces, reducing isolation, roadkill and inbreeding while improving individual welfare.

Key Facts

Habitat fragmentation is a leading cause of local wildlife population decline in urban areas
Urban wildlife corridors can include hedgerow networks, river corridors, railway embankments and green roofs
Hedgehog highways — small holes in garden fences — are a simple intervention that dramatically improves hedgehog access to foraging habitat
The Sheffield Nature Network and similar urban biodiversity plans map and protect wildlife corridors at city scale
Connected urban green spaces support significantly higher biodiversity than isolated patches of equivalent total area

Welfare Considerations

Urban wildlife corridors provide welfare benefits by allowing animals to access adequate food, shelter and mates. Isolated wildlife populations in urban parks suffer from resource limitation, inbreeding and elevated stress from inability to respond to threats by dispersing. Road networks that interrupt natural movement corridors cause significant mortality and welfare harm to animals attempting to cross. Even simple interventions — small fence holes for hedgehogs, wildlife crossings for roads — can dramatically reduce mortality and isolation. The welfare value of connectivity far exceeds that of isolated habitat patches, because connected animals have access to the range of resources needed for adequate welfare.

What You Can Do

Join your local hedgehog network and install hedgehog highways in your garden fence
Advocate for wildlife corridor protection in local planning decisions
Support the Wildlife Trusts Living Landscape approach to connected habitat networks
Report wildlife roadkill to help identify high-risk crossing points for intervention
Engage with your local authority on urban biodiversity plans that include corridor mapping and protection