Create more 20mph zones to stop hedgehogs being run over, charities say
More 20mph zones should be created on Britain’s roads to stop hedgehogs from being run over, charities have said.
An eighth of all hedgehogs in the country die every year as roadkill and charities have made reducing these fatalities a priority for hedgehog conservation.
The first ever National Hedgehog Conservation Strategy by the People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES) and The British Hedgehog Preservation Society (BHPS) was launched on Monday to safeguard the spiky mammal.
The report identified six threats to hedgehogs to be addressed in the next decade — a decrease in natural food and habitat, increased vehicle collisions, unintentional mortality due to human intervention, accidental death, toxin accumulation and genetic isolation.
Nida Al-Fulaij, the study co-author and chief executive officer of PTES, told The Telegraph: “Roadkill has been identified as a priority threat in the National Hedgehog Conservation Strategy.”
Ms Al-Fulaij, a Green Party candidate at the 2024 election, and her colleagues say 115,000 hedgehogs die on the roads every year and “roadkill hotspots” are often where speed limits change.
“It is thought that traffic calming measures, coupled with 20mph zones implemented for human safety, will help to alleviate the issue,” she told The Telegraph.
“As part of the strategy roll-out we hope to identify local partners who can select areas where these measures can be trialled and gather the evidence to monitor such sites for hedgehog road mortality moving forward.”
The strategy seeks to “reduce vehicle speeds where appropriate” and hopes to achieve this by “working with local authorities to implement widespread, appropriate physical traffic calming measures in likely hedgehog roadkill zones”.
They hope to prioritise cheap ways of slowing down cars in rural areas, such as rumble strips which are grooved patterns in the road to vibrate a car.
In more built-up areas, such as housing estates, they want to bring in other measures to slow traffic, such as chicanes.
The charities hope that by aligning their campaign with the plans to roll out 20mph zones across the country they can make roads safer for hedgehogs.
Other measures the charities hope to implement over the next decade include reducing the amount of feeding of hedgehogs that well-meaning people do in their gardens.
“We’re increasingly aware that there could be unintended consequences of supplementary feeding, such as the potential for transmission of disease and aggression between hedgehogs as well as other species as they compete for the same food.
“We aren’t asking people not to leave the right food out (meaty cat or dog food or cat biscuits), but we ask that a more natural diet is considered alongside it. Improving gardens to increase their natural food supply of invertebrate prey will do this.”