It’s almost impossible to take your car for a drive without seeing some of the millions of animals that are killed on roads each year.
Such deaths, commonly referred to by researchers as roadkill, negatively affect wildlife populations. But exactly how it does so remains unclear. Raw roadkill counts are not enough to determine how roadkill can disrupt a population’s survival.
In a recent study, my colleagues and I gathered published data on 150 mammal populations from 69 species around the world. We then compared mammal deaths on roads to key biological parameters including population size to determine the effect of roadkill on different animal species.
