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The European hedgehog—a valued and charming visitor to gardens—is now officially in decline all over Europe. In today's update of their red list for Europe, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is therefore categorizing the hedgehog as "near threatened." According to the IUCN, there is a real risk of the hedgehog being pushed towards extinction unless something is done to reverse the downward trend.

The assessment report forming the basis for the IUCN's new red list assessment and status change for hedgehogs was written by the Danish hedgehog expert Sophie Lund Rasmussen, an affiliated researcher at Aalborg University (AAU), and her colleague Abigail Gazzard, who is Programme Officer for the IUCN SSC Small Mammal Specialist Group. A correspondence article has also been in the journal Nature.

"I find it extremely sad and deeply worrying that even an animal as cherished and popular as the hedgehog is disappearing from the wild. It is a species that people really want to take care of, so what does it tell us about the state of nature in general," asks Lund Rasmussen, an affiliated researcher at AAU.

Together with Gazzard, Lund Rasmussen has found evidence of a worrying decline in hedgehog populations in several European countries of more than 30 percent over the past 10 years, for example in countries like Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Germany and the UK.

"I have dedicated my entire life and my research to protecting hedgehogs and to finding out why they are in such steep decline and how we can stop it. That is why I am honored to have been appointed as the expert responsible for securing the data needed to establish exactly how serious the situation is for the European hedgehog. This is the first step towards being able to launch initiatives that can prevent the hedgehogs from becoming extinct," says Lund Rasmussen, who also goes by the nickname "Dr. Hedgehog."

Lund Rasmussen has been invited to speak in the European Parliament in November at a session dedicated to the decline of the hedgehog population and how the EU may slow this decline.

Several threats to hedgehogs

The decline in the hedgehog population is due to a variety of factors, all of which are man-made. These include traffic, which kills up to a third of the hedgehog population every year. Other reasons include intensive farming and residential developments, which are destroying the hedgehogs' natural habitats.

Also, hedgehogs suffer a lot of accidents in gardens. For example, the world's oldest hedgehog, Thorvald, who was 16 years old, as Lund Rasmussen discovered in her research, was killed by dog bites. Research also shows that certain robot lawnmowers can pose a danger for hedgehogs.

"Our gardens are where the battle to save the hedgehogs will be fought. They live close to us, and by teaching the Danes how to make their gardens hedgehog-friendly, we can improve the living conditions and chances of survival of these charismatic and highly beneficial animals," says Lund Rasmussen.

Unfortunately, there is a lack data documenting the decline in Denmark, but to fill this data gap, hedgehog researcher Sophie Lund Rasmussen is heading the "Danmarks Pindsvin" conservation campaign together with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), asking Danes to help map the hedgehog population in Denmark.