Road safety for animals

Every year more cars and trucks flood onto the world's expanding road networks. Busy roads and highways, with their constant traffic, present a life-threatening hazard for wildlife.

Visual cues

Whether animals are migrating or simply searching for food, they may have to cross roads that intersect their habitats. Unwittingly, they may find themselves the victims of cars and trucks that travel a great deal faster than they can.

All over the world small mammals become road kills. Motorists can spot the re-mains of skunks, badgers, birds, snakes, and even alli-gators along the roadsides.

Deer frequently wander onto roads and cause serious accidents. A car hitting such a large animal can easily go out of control.

Skunks and badgers use particular routes as they move around at night in search of food. These routes frequently cross roads. Hedgehogs, too, hunt in the dark. They do not help themselves by curling up when they sense danger. This form of defense puts off its natural enemies, but does not protect it against vehicles moving at speeds as fast as 60 miles per hour. Rabbits sometimes become hypno-tized by the headlights of oncoming cars and fail to jump out of the way.

Every spring throughout Europe toads make their way to traditional breeding ponds, following the same, ancient routes. Unfortunately, toads move very slowly. Every year thousands of these amphibians are killed when they attempt to cross roads.

Birds and insects, too, get hit as they fly across roads. At night, headlights attract moths. Game birds stray from fields and cannot fly away in time.

Still, some birds like crows feed on the carcasses of other animals killed on roads. They rarely get hit because they are quick enough to fly off as a car approaches.

The fatalities

Thousands of barn owls die every year on roads as they pursue their prey, flying low over the ground. In Denmark as many as 100,000 hedge-hogs annually are run over by cars and trucks. More than half of all the foxes living in urban areas in Great Britain are killed on the roads yearly. And about 1,000 badgers are run over every year.

What is being done?

• Safer crossings
  Humans have crossing areas on roads for themselves. So we must also provide more crossings for wild species.

• Panther protection
  Road accidents are the lead-ing cause of death for one of Florida’s rarest species, the Florida panther. Only about 30 to 50 Florida panthers now exist in the state. Panther tun-nels now run underneath the highways in the panther’s area to stop them from being hit by cars when they go out hunting. Fencing beside the highway guides the animals safely into these underpasses.

• Migrating elk
  In the western United States, elk often have to cross roads. They migrate high into the Rockies in the summer then come back down for the win-ter. The highways on their mi-gration routes have tunnels underneath them that allow the elk to pass safely under the roads.

• Tunnels for small animals
  Toad tunnels built in Europe have proved to be a great success. Badgers and sala-manders have their own underpasses too, but such constructions are not possible for every animal. Tunnels for animals that do not follow set routes when crossing roads, as do badgers and toads, are impractical. Some small animals just have to take their chances.

• Warning signs
  Road signs are excellent safety aids to warn motorists.

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  What you can do

  Motorists need to drive more carefully along highways and country roads where animals habitually cross. Drivers that spot an animal on the road ahead of them should brake slowly rather than swerve to avoid hitting the animal. Swerving can cause serious accidents

  Another way drivers can avoid hitting animals is by paying attention to warning signs that alert them to animal crossings on the road ahead.

  In areas where there are no road signs to warn of animal crossings, the community should establish such signs, thereby ensuring that wildlfe will be better protected on the roads.