The Killing Roads

By Sandra Coveny

“Looking at life from a different perspective makes you realize that it’s not the deer that is crossing the road, rather it’s the road that is crossing the forest.” – Muhammad Ali

Roads take their toll

Over one million animals will die on US roads today. Over one million animals will die on roads in Brazil today. Half a million rare and endangered animals, like the ones you visit in zoos, will die on the roads in Tasmania this year. Over a hundred animals, such as deer, panthers, tigers, armadillos, porcupines, squirrels, Tasmanian devils, raccoons, and eagles will be killed by cars in the US, India, and Brazil combined by the time you are done reading this article. The list goes on, and would be much worse if we considered the billions of small creatures, particularly flying insects, killed by cars every year. That is more wildlife deaths by roads and motor vehicles than by poachers, deforestation or pollution (Brazil, 2018). And now we are learning that there may be links between increasing roadkill numbers and the impacts of climate change. The results of carbon emissions include changing the timing and availability of both food and water – for humans (Quaempts, 2018) and for wildlife (see Sweden case study below). For both humans and wildlife, that change means traveling farther and wider in search of food and water, and for wildlife, it means risking death by crossing more roads, with more frequency.

Since humans began using means other than foot to travel, there have been casualties due to collisions. My great uncle was killed by a horse and cart in Poland when he was a child. Many people and domestic animals (dogs, cats, chickens, goats) were struck and killed or maimed on narrow streets by passing horses and their drawn carts. Since the modern car became commonplace around the globe, starting in the 1920s, there has been roadkill. Today, with nearly 8 billion people on the planet driving 1.2 billion cars (Volker, J. 2014)  and with the impacts of climate change on water and food availability approaching a nadir, cars and roads are becoming the single most dangerous threat facing wildlife (arguably, all life) today.

People have taken many steps and spent millions of dollars to save lives of the humans driving and riding in cars, or who are otherwise potential victims of the automobile. We have crosswalks, crossing lights, pedestrian rights of way, seat belts, airbags, auto-braking technology, backup lights, back up beepers, and drivers education – which is a series of videos showing gruesome accidents, aimed at scaring new drivers into compliance with safety rules of the road.

When animal-vehicle conflicts are mentioned, it is most often in the context of monetary cost: damages to your car, insurance claims, hospital bills.  In New England, for example, its common to see a bright yellow sign with a moose outline and the words: “Brake for Moose: It could save your life”.

But what about the moose?

The spiritual toll for our fossil fuel addiction runs deep: nature deficit disorder is very real (Louv, 2005), and is the result of a fracture between our need to connect with nature, and our realities of living separate from it. Cars are the most obvious and the most personal manifestation of both our addiction to fossil fuels and our disconnect from the earth and its other inhabitants. By driving cars, we isolate ourselves from experiencing the place through which we travel. Instead of experiencing the time as distance travelled, smells and tactile experiences, and yes, even pain and exhaustion, we careen around in a controlled and tiny environment, listening to stories or music, missing out on the sounds and smells and experience of the place.  At the same time as we isolate ourselves in cars from each other and from other animals,  in the US alone, we are contributing up to 20% of the total global greenhouse gas emissions through driving (see figure: Union of Concerned Scientists 2017).

Another toll taken is the psychological impact of killing something by mistake, and seeing dead animals splayed out, often gory, along the roads.  Sure, there are those few deliberate killers who speed up in order to hit the target in the road; and oppositely, there are those few who get out and try to move a fellow creature out of the road (e.g. turtles). More of us, though, are just quietly diminished by the ongoing tragedy of roadkill. Anyone who has lost a person, dog or cat to a car collision remembers the trauma well.  Those who have hit and killed anything with their car — and who among us has not?! — knows that life is never the same afterward. Roadkill is inconvenient, expensive and hazardous – and it also can deplete one’s spirit, and cause great and lasting emotional trauma.  Conversely, taking action to report and reduce these needless and traumatic experiences can serve as a healing balm on many levels.

Case Studies
I wanted to know which countries suffer the highest roadkill numbers and to learn what they are doing about reducing those numbers, and how well different remedies are working. I looked at the data about roadkill, including the sources of funding for studies where data were collected.  Many roadkill studies are conducted by insurance companies because of the resulting insurance claims by the drivers of the damaged cars after collisions with large wildlife. I did not focus on those studies because their data are not comprehensive – and they generally do not document smaller animals such as birds, rodents, reptiles, and amphibians.

I narrowed my investigation to countries with abundant roadkill data, where roadkill studies were done in service to preservation of biodiversity, and, with the exception of Sweden, to places where CO2 emissions are among the highest levels globally.  Those levels varied from 1-16% of the global total emissions by country. These countries have abundant data from credible sources, and have a high potential to set examples that could effect a change in global behavior.

The areas I focused on for this article are:

Sweden – their studies cited climate change as one of the reasons for increased roadkill,

India – high biodiversity and the country contributes 6% of the global CO2 emissions (see figure 1),

Brazil – considered the country with the highest biodiversity and also contributes 1% of the global CO2 emissions (see figure 1), and

United States – high biodiversity, and contributes 16% of the global CO2 emissions (see figure 1).

Roadkill is exacerbated by many factors, I looked into any information I could find regarding each of the following causes for roadkill, and related solutions:

• Ignorance: Either during the road design process where wildlife needs were overlooked in the first place, or by drivers not paying close attention, or by the animals not being road savvy.
• External pressures: Habitat loss and degradation caused by human impacts can force animal migration patterns to change.
• Attraction to carrion of other wildlife: Many collisions are the result of the first roadkill becoming food for the next.
• Climate Change: While this can be considered a habitat constraint, I kept it separate because its an important but often overlooked habitat constraint. Because of climate change, animals are turning up in areas where they are not expected, and where road conditions are not conducive to wildlife crossing even in places where animal crossing mitigation measures are in place.

Sweden
Sweden has spent significant resources to protect animals from roads. And they are spending more as a result of a recently documented sharp increases in roadkill. According to multiple sources in Sweden’s media, 2016 saw the highest number of automobile-animal collisions, up 20% — which represents the sharpest rise in the history of documenting roadkill.  Wildlife biologists state that this increase is due to changes in wildlife behaviors and travel patterns as a result of the effects of climate change.  According to the Swedish news source ‘The Local News’:

A warmer climate is believed to be the main reason behind the increase [in road kill], with mild winters and dry spells in summer causing the animals to travel longer distances in search of water.

The problem compounds when the  animals who scavenge roadkill are killed by cars while trying to eat the carcasses.  Sweden’s eagles are suffering the most as a result of the increased occurrences of roadkill. The increase in dead moose, deer and reindeer is creating a veritable buffet for carrion eaters, especially those opportunistic critters who prefer to not have to kill for themselves, like eagles.  Last year (2017), “a total of 96 eagles were killed in traffic, as were 33 lynx, 12 bears, six wolves and two wolverines”.  Eagles. Being killed by cars. That should say it all.

Their solutions: Remove roadkill off the roads more quickly to reduce the secondary kills, and repair and lengthen fences where roadkill is most prevalent.

Brazil
Brazil is one of the most biologically diverse countries in the world. Recognizing that, its people, have taken on the task of understanding the impacts of roadkill and how to reduce them.

Brazil estimates that upwards of 1 million animals are killed every day on their roads (CBEE 2015).

In 2011, Brazilian ecologists launched an app for smartphones that tracks roadkill in real time and helps to inform conservationists and transportation officials about where the problems exist and for which species.

In what is currently the most widely cited paper about reducing roadkill in Brazil, Jochen Jaeger, associate professor of geography at Concordia University, conducted a comprehensive study with an international team of ecologists. Their results indicate that a combination of fencing and crossing structures, including culverts, underpasses, and overpasses, were the most effective forms of roadkill prevention. According to the study:

“Of the more than 40 prevention methods available, the researchers found that, overall, fences, with or without crossing structures, reduce roadkill by 54 per

cent, when considering all species combined. Crossing structures had no detectable effect without fencing. When large mammals were examined, the combination

of fences and crossing structures led to a roadkill reduction of 83 per cent, while animal detection systems (such as laser tripwires or radar), led to a 57 per cent reduction.” (Jaeger, J et al, 2017)

India
India has been recovering its national animal, the Bengal Tiger, aggressively since 1972. Several large reserves have been dedicated to tiger conservation. Also, while much research  has been conducted to track movements of tigers through their reserves, several other studies track the populations of other species’ (such as striped hyenas) population responses to tiger reserves.  Roads and main highways intersect tiger reserves, and many are killed as a result of collisions with cars.

One unique effort in India has been the use of tracking collars on tigers for identifying road crossing patterns. The tigers are collared for tracking purposes and GPS is used to map their routes and habitat uses, so it was a very simple matter of using that tracking data to help mitigate car collisions and recommend road remediation (Habib, et al 2015)

Tigers are the focus of much research attention in India, but they are just one of many species of concern in India, a few others include hyenas, elephant (full grown animals are killed by trains, calves are killed by cars and trucks), leopards, Indian civet and deer. Most carnivore populations are confined to protected areas. These areas are the last available habitats for these wildlife but they are isolated patches of habitat in a sea of  human settlements. Many of these reserves actually include human settlements within their boundaries as well, and are bisected by roads, some heavily travelled. As the wildlife populations recover and grow, more wildlife are leaving reserves, and, crossing roads.