02/11/2026
Matt Ridley of the daily mail is intent in demonising badgers, when the real cause of hedgehog numbers rapid decline is down to humans. His article is a load of nonsense. His sloppy “jounalism” included his use of a photo of an african pygmy hedgehog; not one of our wild native european species. 🙄🤦♀️
So what are the real threats to hedgehogs in the UK?
The vast majority of the threats they face are caused by HUMAN activity! We have changed their world so dramatically that simply surviving has become a challenge.
🚗 1. ROADS AND TRAFFIC: More cars, more roads, more traffic and more hedgehogs killed trying to cross them. Roads also divide populations, making it harder to find food, mates and suitable habitat. The UK now has more cars and roads than ever before.
💧 2. LOSS OF PONDS AND ACCESSIBLE WATER: Hedgehogs need reliable access to drinking water. Unlike other UK mammals and birds, they need fully accessible water just to survive. Filling in ponds, removing or fencing off water sources makes survival hard or impossible. Steep-sided ponds without escape routes can become death traps.
🚜 3. INTENSIVE FARMING: Modern farming has transformed our countryside. Huge fields, fewer wild margins, heavy machinery and intensive land management mean fewer places for hedgehogs to live, shelter and feed.
🌳 4. REMOVAL OF HEDGEROWS: Hedgerows provide food, shelter, nesting places and safe routes between habitats. Around 50% of hedgerows have been dug out since the 1950s, destroying vital hedgehog highways.
🐛 5. PESTICIDES AND INSECT DECLINE: Widespread pesticide use kills the beetles, caterpillars and other invertebrates hedgehogs depend upon. Fewer insects = less food for hedgehogs.
🧪 6. HERBICIDES AND CHEMICAL EXPOSURE: Garden and agricultural chemicals can cause eye irritation or injury, expose hedgehogs to harmful substances and destroy plants that support their prey and provide protective cover.
🩸 7. STRIMMERS AND GARDEN MACHINERY: Strimmers, brush cutters and mowers cause horrific, often fatal injuries. Hedgehogs curl up rather than run away, making cutting long grass or undergrowth without checking first extremely dangerous.
☀️ 8. CLIMATE CHANGE AND DROUGHT: Hotter summers and prolonged droughts dry out soil, reduce invertebrate prey and make water harder to find. Wetter winters are forecast, increasing the risk of hibernating hedgehogs drowning.
🦠 9. ARTERIVIRUS AND EMERGING DISEASE: Newly recognised and circulating viruses are another pressure on hedgehog populations, particularly when animals are already weakened by environmental pressures.
🪴 10. THE OBSESSION WITH TIDY GARDENS: Perfect lawns soaked in herbicides, cleared borders, removed leaves, no weeds, log piles or wild corners. We are systematically removing the places hedgehogs traditionally forage, nest and shelter.
🧱 11. IMPASSABLE FENCES AND WALLS: Hedgehogs travel considerable distances each night, but solid fences and walls prevent them reaching food, water and mates. Six-foot fencing with solid gravel boards is replacing hedges everywhere. Long concrete barriers along motorway central reservations also restrict movement.
🏘️ 12. HOUSING DEVELOPMENTS: Huge new estates replace fields, hedgerows, wild spaces and even small patches of scrubland. New gardens are often tiny, barren, fenced off and completely inaccessible to hedgehogs.
🕳️ 13. OPEN DRAINS, POST HOLES, CATTLE GRIDS AND TRENCHES: Hedgehogs fall into holes, drains and excavations and cannot escape. Some die slowly from dehydration, starvation, exposure or flystrike.
🕸️ 14. NETTING AND LITTER: Loose football goal nets, discarded netting, garden mesh, plastic rings and rubbish trap hedgehogs, causing serious injuries, restricted circulation and death.
🔥 15. BONFIRES AND GARDEN CLEARANCES: Piles of leaves, branches and garden waste make attractive nesting places. Burning or clearing them without checking can kill sleeping hedgehogs.
🐕 16. DOG ATTACKS: Dog attacks are increasing and can cause devastating puncture wounds, internal injuries and fatal infections, even when there is very little visible damage.
☠️ 17. POISONS AND CONTAMINATION: Rat poison, Jeyes Fluid, Dettol, antifreeze, waste oil, cleaners and other toxic chemicals pose serious risks. Hedgehogs can be poisoned by eating bait, walking through chemicals or eating contaminated carrion.
🍞 18. INAPPROPRIATE FOOD: People want to help hedgehogs, but online advice is often incorrect. Mealworms, peanuts, raisins and other inappropriate foods are still being offered. Some people STILL put out bread and milk, despite that advice having been frowned upon for decades!
🟩 19. ARTIFICIAL GRASS, DECKING AND PAVING: Plastic lawns provide no natural foraging habitat. Decking, paving and hard landscaping replace living soil and its creatures. Many gardens have become barren outdoor rooms with nothing to eat or drink. Gravel, however, can be wildlife-friendly when plants grow through or around it.
🌍 20. HABITAT FRAGMENTATION AND ISOLATED POPULATIONS: Perhaps the biggest problem is that ALL THESE THREATS WORK TOGETHER. Hedgehogs are left in small, disconnected pockets of habitat, facing inbreeding, emerging viruses and increasing difficulty finding food, mates and safe nesting places. Each threat makes the others worse.
🦡 AND WHAT ABOUT BADGERS? Badgers are natural predators of hedgehogs, although they don't see them as a food source everywhere, and they can compete for food. But badgers are native wildlife, not a human-created threat. There is no established scientific top-20 ranking of threats, but we don't believe badgers would feature in it. Their impact can be significant locally, but we consider them a minor issue overall compared with the enormous pressures caused by human activity.
💚 STOP BLAMING OTHER WILDLIFE! We need to look at what WE are doing to the countryside, our towns and our gardens. 🦔 Hedgehogs don't need us to get rid of badgers. They need us to stop destroying the places they live!
🌿 More wild spaces. 🌳 More hedgerows. 🐞 More insects. 💧 More accessible water. 🏡 More connected gardens. 🚗 Safer roads.
❤️ And a lot more consideration for the wildlife trying to survive alongside us.
🦔 PLEASE SHARE! Let's focus attention on the threats we can actually do something about!
