iconAnil Madhavapeddy, Professor of Planetary Computing

Mapping urban and rural British hedgehogs

This is an idea proposed in 2025 as a good starter project, and is currently being worked on by Gabriel Mahler. It is co-supervised with Silviu Petrovan.

The National Hedgehog Monitoring Programme aims to provide robust population estimates for the beloved hedgehog.

Despite being the nation’s favourite mammal, there's a lot more to learn about hedgehog populations across the country. We do know that, although urban populations are faring better than their rural counterparts, overall hedgehogs are declining across Britain, so much so that they’re now categorised as Vulnerable to extinction. -- NHMP

The People's Trust for Endangered Species has been coordinating the programme. For the purposes of this project, we have access to:

Our initial efforts in the summer of 2025 will be to put together a high res map of UK hedgehog habitats, specifically brambles and likely urban habitats. Once that works, the plan is to apply some spatially explicit modeling, still focussing on the UK. This will involving exciting collaborating with the PTES who I'm looking forward to meeting!

# 1st Jun 2025 iconideas ai biodiversity health idea-beginner idea-ongoing sensing urban urop

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