In this project, we investigate which vertebrates die on Austria's roads and what the possible reasons for this are.
What does roadkill mean?
Roadkill is the term used to describe all animals that die in road traffic. The German term Wildunfall (wildlife accident) falls short as a translation, because it usually only refers to larger mammals and occasionally birds. This is also reflected in official statistics - data on animals killed in road traffic are mainly collected on so-called "huntable game". Data on all other animal species - including endangered species such as amphibians - are missing.
What is the relevance of roadkill?
Roads dissect the habitats of many animal species. Applied to human living spaces, this would mean that, for example, the connection between kitchen and living room is crossed by a road. Animals cross roads when, for example, they are searching for food, looking for mating partners or when they are moving between winter and summer quarters (such as toads during their migration in spring). Animal species that make these migrations are therefore particularly frequently affected by roadkill.
Roadkill also has relevance for humans - animals on the roadway pose a great danger to motorists and also a great ethical burden. Not only collisions with large wild animals such as deer, wild boar and co cause personal injury and property damage every year - small animals such as hedgehogs and toads can also cause damage, as accidents due to swerving and braking manoeuvres happen time and again.
Goals of the Roadkill project?
Our clear goal is to reduce the number of roadkills as much as possible by getting to the bottom of the causes of roadkills.
The first step is to get an overview of the number, extent and distribution of roadkills in Austria. By compiling many individual data into one large data set, we try to determine under which conditions (weather, time of day, ...), at which locations (forest, meadow, local area, ...), on which roads, which animals become victims of roadkill.
In addition to answering these scientific questions, we would like to identify "hotspots", i.e. places where roadkill is particularly frequent. In the future, we will try to defuse these hotspots in cooperation with authorities, NGOs and communities.
The overall aim of the Roadkill project is to raise awareness of roadkill among all participants.
Genetic detection and road-kill hotspot analysis of roadkilled vertebrate species on selected roads in Lower Austria
Road networks usually have a negative impact on wildlife populations, especially through road-kill as a result of collisions with vehicles, and can thus lead to population declines of individual species. Official statistics on road-kill in Austria are only available for huntable game (e.g. wild boar), in which Lower Austria has been in negative first place for years. Data on non-huntable vertebrate species, some of which are protected, are largely lacking. A challenge, especially for smaller vertebrates such as most amphibians or passerine birds, is the short detection period on roads. In addition, many species cannot be adequately identified due to repeated roadkill. Incorrect species identification can have far-reaching consequences and falsify scientific analyses or complicate conservation measures. Genetic analyses, such as barcoding, can be a helpful tool for species identification in this case, but depending on the nature conservation law of the respective province as well as the protection status of the animal, permits for invasive sampling (blood, fur, tissue, etc.) are required. So far, there are hardly any studies in Austria based on barcoding of road-kills.
The aim of GeRoKi is to evaluate where road-kill of vertebrates occurs more frequently (road-kill hotspots) by means of regular road-kill monitoring on selected road sections in Lower Austria for the first time. Furthermore, it will be tested whether a non-invasive collection of blood and tissue samples from the road surface below or directly next to the killed vertebrates is an effective means of extracting DNA for species identification.
This study has a model character, as the results and findings can be transferred to numerous other problems and survey approaches of different animal species (e.g. detection of neozoa).
