Slaughtered by cars, the number of European hedgehogs is dwindling October 29, 2024

Slaughtered by cars, the number of European hedgehogs is dwindling / Photo: © DPA/AFP/File.

By AFP - Agence France Presse

Slaughtered by cars, the number of European hedgehogs is dwindling

Western Europe's hedgehog - the spiny, nocturnal creature that people love to find in the garden - is in decline, being slaughtered by cars as its shrinking habitat forces it ever closer to humans.

An update to the Red List of Threatened Species, published on Monday at the UN COP16 biodiversity summit in Cali, Colombia, downgraded the hedgehog's status from “least concern” to “near threatened.”

The next level on the list maintained by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is “vulnerable” and then “endangered”.

The European hedgehog expert Sophie Rasmussen told AFP, “is very close to being ‘vulnerable’ and will probably move into that category the next time we assess it.”

The small mammal's numbers have more than halved in its host countries, including Britain, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria.

The estimated decline has been between 35% and 40% of measured populations in Britain, Sweden, and Norway over the last decade, said Rasmussen, a researcher at the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at Oxford University.

In the Netherlands, it is already considered endangered.

The hedgehog's main killer is cars, which the animals increasingly encounter as they lose their natural habitat to human expansion.

“Humans are the hedgehogs' worst enemies,” said Rasmussen.

- Hedgehog highways

To protect itself from predators such as badgers, foxes, and owls at night, the hedgehog uses the strategy of standing completely still while assessing the threat.

If the threat approaches, the hedgehog runs as far as its little legs can carry it. But if there's no time, it curls up into a ball - protected by up to 8,000 spines, sharp to the touch.

“In front of a car, that's not a very good strategy,” Rasmussen, who calls herself Dr. Hedgehog and speaks with great passion about the spiky mammals, told AFP in a video interview from Lejre, Denmark.

Other threats are pesticides used by farmers and gardeners and the decline of insects that make up a large part of the hedgehog's diet.

In general, hedgehogs live for around two years, although some have been recorded as old as nine or 12 years.

They can start reproducing from the age of 12 months, usually giving birth to three or five young at a time.

“This means that many hedgehogs get to reproduce once or twice, if they're lucky, on average, before they die,” said Rasmussen, enough ‘to maintain the population at some level.’

Soon, that may not be enough.

Rasmussen, whose research was included in the Red List update, said that the fight to save the hedgehogs “will take place in people's gardens” as forests and other wild areas are cleared.

She suggested that people build “hedgehog highways” - a CD-sized hole in the outside fence to allow the animals to enter via the road, with water bowls and nesting materials, such as garden waste, placed inside.

“The best thing you can do is let your garden grow freely to attract... all the hedgehog's natural food, such as insects, earthworms, snails and slugs,” said Rasmussen.

She admits that “it's not as if the world is going to end tomorrow if the hedgehogs aren't there.”

However, “for such a popular and much-loved species, can we accept the fact that we are causing its extinction?

“And if we let things get this bad with a species we care about, what about all the species we don't care about?”

The new updated Red List assessed 166,061 species of plants and animals in total, of which 46,337 - more than a quarter - are threatened with extinction.

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