Robot mowers mutilate hedgehogs when driving at night

Published 19 September 2024 at 09.30

Domestic. The red-listed Swedish hedgehog is threatened when homeowners run ever quieter robotic mowers even at night.

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In Bjäre, Skåne, the Nature Conservation Association has started a campaign to get more people to change the times of their robotic lawnmowers to spare the hedgehogs, who are most active between dusk and dawn.

During the day, hedgehogs usually sleep.

Research from the University of Oxford shows that robotic lawnmowers can pose a major risk to hedgehogs, but so can poisons, traffic, reduced numbers of insects and too tidy gardens, according to SVT.

– It is very easy to only have the robotic lawnmower on between 10 and 16 when the hedgehogs sleep, says Ulrica Hilmersson at the Nature Conservation Association to SVT Skåne.