Woman has saved more than 1,000 hedgehogs in eight years after turning her home into a hedgehog rescue center
A woman has turned her home in Orsay, south of Paris, into a hedgehog rescue centre, warning that “there is a major problem with hedgehog populations in France and Europe.”
Sara Stahl, the French woman who created a hedgehog rescue center/PHOTO: AP News
According to the AP News report, Sara Stahl created a hedgehog rescue center at her home near Paris, where she has cared for more than 1,000 hedgehogs over the past eight years.
It all started in 2018, when Stahl and her husband found two motherless baby hedgehogs in their garden in Orsay. She spoke to The Associated Press about the dangers hedgehogs face in urban areas.
“We are becoming increasingly aware that there is a major problem with hedgehog populations from France and Europe, caused by several factors. On the one hand, the problem is related to the fragmentation of their habitat and, obviously, roads, which cause a lot of losses among hedgehogs.” he told.
On the other hand, adds Stahl, many hedgehogs are run over by cars, blocked by fences and walls.
Also, the constructions “it prevents them from moving from place to place to find food or a breeding partner.”
“As a result, they are forced to use the roads, where unfortunately many of them are hit by cars. Pesticides are also a major problem because they destroy hedgehogs' food, which consists of insects and other small creatures in gardens and fields.
Thus, hedgehogs can no longer find food and either die of hunger or are poisoned by various pesticides. These are real sources of danger for all small nocturnal animals,” explained this.
Ultrasonic devices, a solution to keep hedgehogs off the roads
Oxford University researchers have discovered that hedgehogs can hear very high frequencies, up to 85 kHz, far beyond the limit of human hearing, writes The Guardian.
The study looked at the brain's reactions to sounds and the structure of the hedgehog's ear, and the results could help develop ultrasonic devices for cars or garden equipment to keep hedgehogs at bay and reduce accidents.
Study co-ordinator Dr Sophie Lund Rasmussen, Assistant Professor at the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at the University of Oxford and the University of Copenhagen, said:
“Having discovered that hedgehogs can hear ultrasound, the next step will be to find collaborators from the automotive industry to fund and design sonic repellers for cars.
If our future research shows that it is possible to devise an effective device to keep hedgehogs away from cars, this could have a significant impact on reducing the threat posed by road traffic to the declining European hedgehog.”
Vehicles are estimated to kill up to one in three hedgehogs, a major factor in the drastic decline of this beloved mammal in Europe in recent decades.
