Dr Hedgehog

New study on the accumulation of pesticides in the Danish hedgehogs

In collaboration with good colleagues, I have published a scientific study, that uncovers the accumulation of 19 selected pesticides in the livers of 115 dead hedgehogs from Denmark. Unfortunately, we found that there was a worryingly high prevalence of pesticides in the hedgehogs! 84% of them had rat/mouse poison in their livers! You can read the study here: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/veterinary-science/articles/10.3389/fvets.2024.1436965/full, or watch the lecture I gave about the research. It is available on my YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/rTEFKuIABT4?feature=shared.

Impressive support for this year's hedgehog count

This year's hedgehog count took place on Saturday 10 August 2024, and there was a great turnout for the count. Over 16,000 hedgehogs were mapped by over 10,000 counters, and we covered even more of the Danish map!

It is astonishing how Danes choose to come together to protect Denmark's hedgehogs (www.danmarkspindsvin.dkIt leaves me with a peace of mind and hope for the future of hedgehogs.

I will use the knowledge gathered in my research to optimise and target conservation efforts for Denmark's hedgehogs. Thank you so much for your support!

If you are curious how many hedgehogs were registered in your city, postcode or region, you can visit here.

We hope you'll join us again next year when we count hedgehogs on Saturday 9th of August 2025.

The Danmarks Pindsvin campaign is a collaboration between WWF Denmark and hedgehog researcher Sophie Lund Rasmussen and is made possible through generous support from the Nordea Foundation.

We are counting Denmark's hedgehogs!

On Saturday, August 10, it all begins again: we will be counting Denmark's hedgehogs! Denmark was on high alert in August 2023 when the first national hedgehog count took place. More than 15,000 people helped register hedgehogs during the counting period, and a total of 33,523 live and dead hedgehogs were observed across the country. 
In addition, 2,984 reports were registered from people who looked without seeing a hedgehog. These are important figures that provide a basis for comparison when we once again host the national hedgehog count on Saturday, August 10 2024. Furthermore, the registrations help map where the hedgehogs are present and where they are not, which both engages Danes in preserving their local natural areas and makes us much wiser about the condition of hedgehogs in the Danish nature. WWF has developed a simple registration module where you can record the hedgehogs you see (or don’t see!). 
All data will be used in my research so that we can learn more about whether hedgehogs are in decline in Denmark, and where and how to focus efforts to preserve hedgehogs in the wild. Please visit www.danmarkspindsvin.dk where you can find tips and tricks on how to increase your chances of seeing a hedgehog while avoiding disturbing them. You can also find knowledge about hedgehogs, fun activities and answers to the most frequently asked questions about hedgehogs in the Danish nature. You can also sign up and share the Facebook event with your network and invite your friends to join, here. Let's spread the important message of the hedgehog count in our networks!

Sampling hedgehog poo on the Outer Hebrides!

This year I am spending my summer holidays collecting hedgehog poo samples on the islands of Benbecula and South Uist in the Outer Hebrides. We will use the faecal samples to investigate which bacteria (both the good and the bad) the hedgehogs carry, as well as which endoparasites they have, and what they eat. We will be extracting DNA from the samples, which we can then use to answer all these questions.

The reason I am researching the hedgehogs on these islands is that they were only introduced 50 years ago. Because there are no predators on the islands (other than people's dogs) that eat the hedgehogs, they have been thriving a little too much. It got to the point where there were so many hedgehogs, that they posed a threat to the large populations of ground-nesting bird species that live on the islands, as the hedgehogs ate their eggs and young. Therefore, attempts were made to remove the hedgehogs from the islands by killing them. Fortunately, the strategy has changed today, and now the plan is instead to try and capture the hedgehogs, transport them to Scotland, and release them back into the wild. But before that happens, we must try to investigate whether the hedgehogs on the Uists could carry parasites and bacteria unknown to the Scottish population, because we have to do our best to avoid transferring disease to the local, Scottish populations, when releasing the Uist hedgehogs in Scotland.

New book on hedgehog research!

In collaboration with colleagues (Nigel Reeve and Anne Berger), I have edited and published a collection of research articles on hedgehogs. The articles are written by a number of international hedgehog researchers, and the collection really does contain important and fascinating knowledge about hedgehogs. The book can be purchased (or downloaded for free as a pdf) here.