The Hedgehog Street campaign and urban connectivity initiatives are transforming how towns and cities manage their green spaces to support one of the UK's most loved declining mammals.
Urban hedgehog connectivity schemes represent one of the most successful examples of engaging the public in direct welfare-improving action for wild animals. The simplicity of the intervention - a 13cm hole in a fence - and the accessibility of hedgehog ecology make it a highly effective public engagement vehicle. The welfare gains are real: hedgehogs in connected gardens can access greater food resources, find mates, and undertake the long-distance movements their biology requires. Network effects mean that individual actions compound: a single hedgehog gap in one garden provides little benefit, but a connected street provides genuine landscape-scale habitat. The campaign demonstrates how individual action scaled through coordinated community effort creates meaningful wildlife welfare improvement.