Urban hedgehog populations have declined by over 50% since the millennium, with garden hazards, habitat fragmentation, and loss of foraging habitat among the key drivers. Simple garden modifications can significantly improve hedgehog welfare and survival.
Urban hedgehogs face a gauntlet of human-created hazards in modern gardens. Strimmers and lawnmowers cause catastrophic injuries — legs, faces, and spines are regularly damaged when hedgehogs shelter in long grass. Netting and garden fencing trap and kill hedgehogs attempting to pass through. Solid fences fragment the interconnected territory hedgehogs need to find mates, food, and suitable hibernation sites. The cumulative effect of these hazards across millions of gardens has contributed to dramatic population decline. Individual garden modifications — wildlife gaps in fences, checking grass before strimming, covering drains, removing netting — have direct welfare benefits for individual hedgehogs and contribute to population-level recovery when adopted at neighbourhood scale.