Urban wildlife corridors connect fragmented green spaces in cities, allowing wildlife movement and reducing vehicle collision mortality for urban-adapted species.
Urban wildlife corridors address a welfare and conservation problem created by the fragmentation of green space through roads, walls, and buildings that block animal movement. The welfare benefit is direct: animals able to move between habitat patches face lower risk of vehicle collision, can access larger food resources, and can participate in social behavior that isolated populations cannot. The hedgehog is a compelling example: garden boundary permeability through small holes determines whether hedgehog populations can survive and breed in suburban areas. Community-level coordination of wildlife-friendly boundaries — the hedgehog highway concept — demonstrates that collective action on small-scale infrastructure can produce meaningful wildlife welfare benefits. Urban wildlife corridors also reduce the stress of territorial conflict in isolated, overcrowded patches.