European hedgehog populations have declined dramatically. Understanding the welfare challenges they face in modern gardens and urban areas helps people take meaningful action.
Hedgehog welfare is primarily determined by habitat quality and human behavior in the spaces hedgehogs use. In gardens, the most direct welfare threats are pesticide-contaminated prey (reducing food availability and causing poisoning), garden machinery accidents (strimmers and mowers cause devastating injuries), drowning in smooth-sided ponds without exit ramps, and bonfire deaths. These are all preventable with simple behavioral changes. At the landscape scale, road mortality and habitat fragmentation are the principal drivers of population decline, requiring policy interventions including wildlife crossings, connected habitat corridors, and agricultural land management reform. Individual garden actions and landscape-scale advocacy are both meaningful components of hedgehog welfare improvement.