Humans do not live on this planet alone. In fact, each and every species is an essential part of an ecosystem. It is our duty to protect them – especially as we are responsible for the disappearance of many wild animal and plant species. The statistics are terrifying. According to the World Wildlife Fund, around […]
Tag: roadkill
How wildlife crossings in Canada are inspiring safer roads for global species
There once was a stretch of Trans-Canada highway so perilous it was known as “The Meat Maker.” The then-infamous section of road that transects Banff National Park, a breathtaking expanse of mountainous terrain and glacial lakes in the Canadian Rockies, averaged about 100 elk-vehicle collisions each year. In the early 1980s, a simple highway expansion […]
‘Highway of death’: animals pay ultimate price on Brazil’s most dangerous road for wildlife
The last time Schwartz’s tracking monitor registered his location, he was standing at the edge of the “highway of death”. A massive male giant anteater, he was roaming his habitat in the Brazilian Cerrado – a vast tropical savanna that neighbours the world’s largest tropical wetland, the Pantanal – when he disappeared next to the […]
POLL: Should the badger cull in England be abandoned and replaced by vaccination?
Just one in 12 badgers found dead on roads has bovine tuberculosis, a Government-backed study has revealed – sparking calls to scrap the controversial cull. Researchers from Nottingham University collected and tested 610 “roadkill” badger carcasses, but found only 51 infected with the disease. The revelations came from a £497,000 study funded by the Department […]
‘We’ve covered huge swathes of the UK in tarmac’: how roads affect birds
In 1925, ecologist Dayton Stoner drove 632 miles through Iowa, making a note of all the dead animals he saw en route. There were 225 pieces of roadkill in total, including red-headed woodpeckers, painted terrapins and blue racer snakes – once-common species that are now rare. The paper, called The Toll of the Automobile, was […]
POLL: Should the eating of roadkill be legalized?
Long the butt of dumb jokes about rural living, eating roadkill is finally having its moment. When I was young, I had the kind of entrepreneurial idea that might only come from the irreverent brain of a quirky, vegan teen: Roadkill fur coats. The biggest shame was in paving through wildlife habitat and driving our […]