Road mortality is a major cause of hedgehog death in the UK. Infrastructure solutions including wildlife underpasses and road design modifications can significantly reduce this preventable welfare harm.
Hedgehog road mortality represents a massive, preventable welfare harm caused entirely by infrastructure design that fails to consider wildlife movement needs. The individual welfare event - a hedgehog struck by a vehicle - is acute traumatic injury causing rapid or delayed death. Multiplied across hundreds of thousands of animals annually, this represents an enormous aggregate welfare cost. Infrastructure solutions - underpasses, drift fences, habitat management - can eliminate road mortality at specific crossing points. Including wildlife underpasses as a standard component of road planning, rather than an exceptional add-on, would systematically reduce this harm across the transport network.