There are thousands and even millions of rabbits, wild boars, deer, toads, cats or sparrows killed on the road every year. Until 55 million animals Vertebrates die every year from being run over in Spain. This is the estimate made by a new study coordinated by the Ministry for the Ecological Transition, which attempts to clear up the difficult mystery regarding the death of fauna on transport routes, and which indicates that the range moves between 18 million and 55 million. million annually. «The data collected reveals a worrying outlook for the conservation of various species,” says the report.
It is not a minor issue. According to the report, the high mortality events suffered by many species of amphibians and some species of birds and mammals suggest that deaths due to road accidentscan cause local extinction dynamics of species. In some cases, especially when the size of the animal is large, it also affects the road safety.
The group with the highest mortality was amphibiansfollowed by gecko lizards and small birds. In the case of the former, the estimate points to a average of 9.7 million of dead individuals per year. “Is frighteningespecially considering that amphibians are already in an unfavorable conservation status due to factors such as climate change, pollution, habitat destruction and infectious diseases such as chytridiomycosis,” the report warns. Adding another factor, such as roads, “can have devastating effects.”
The estimated deaths of lizardswith an average annual estimate of 9.2 million individuals hit by cars and for which there are few options to reduce mortality. For their part, they estimate that the small birds They have an average mortality of 9.1 million individuals per year; while the carnivores They number around 250,000 individuals, mostly domestic dogs and cats.
Accidents
The report, titled ‘Methodology for the study and analysis of vertebrate mortality in transportation infrastructures‘, also highlights the data obtained through the DGT. The reports opened when an animal is involved, which usually affect large ones, such as wild boars or roe deer, say that in 2022 alone there were more than 35,000 of these accidents. “The volume of information collected following this methodology is enormous,” says the report.
Overall, “the annual average of more than 36.5 million deaths highlights the urgent need for mitigation measures and specific conservation strategies to reduce this impact,” they conclude. They propose, for example, the creation of wildlife crossings and exclusion barriers to reduce amphibian deaths. “It can be crucial to reduce this mortality and especially effective in this group, given the frequency with which high rates of collisions are recorded in very specific places on the roads,” they say.
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