Overview

• The amendment to the Bavarian Nature Conservation Act would ban robotic lawn mowers on non-commercial lawns from dusk until sunrise.
• Exemptions would be limited to machines operating under direct supervision or equipped with certified hedgehog-detection systems.
• BUND and Leibniz-IZW data show 370 hedgehog cutting injuries nationwide between June 2022 and October 2023, with nearly half resulting in death.
• Several municipalities have already enacted local nighttime restrictions, motivating the Greens to seek a single statewide policy.
• The proposal is now under parliamentary review while the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation prepares technical guidelines for wildlife-safe mower systems in 2026.