Abstract
Millions of wild animals are killed annually on roads worldwide. During spring 2020, the volume of road traffic was reduced globally as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. We gathered data on wildlife-vehicle collisions (WVC) from Czechia, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Israel, Norway, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and for Scotland and England within the United Kingdom. In all studied countries WVC statistics tend to be dominated by large mammals (various deer species and wild boar), while information on smaller mammals as well as birds are less well recorded. The expected number of WVC for 2020 was predicted on the basis of 2015–2019 WVC time series representing expected WVC numbers under normal traffic conditions. Then, the forecasted and reported WVC data were compared.The results indicate varying levels of WVC decrease between countries during the COVID-19 related traffic flow reduction (CRTR). While no significant change was determined in Sweden, where the state-wide response to COVID-19 was the least intensive, a decrease as marked as 37.4% was identified in Estonia. The greatest WVC decrease, more than 40%, was determined during the first weeks of CRTR for Estonia, Spain, Israel, and Czechia.Measures taken during spring 2020 allowed the survival of large numbers of wild animals which would have been killed under normal traffic conditions. The significant effects of even just a few weeks of reduced traffic, help to highlight the negative impacts of roads on wildlife mortality and the need to boost global efforts of wildlife conservation, including systematic gathering of roadkill data.
Highlights
It has been estimated that some 194 million birds and 29 million mammals are killed annually on European roads (Grilo et al, 2020)
In absolute numbers 17,461 wildlife-vehicle colli sions (WVC) were recorded during COVID-19 related traffic flow reduction (CRTR) in these countries, while 21,530 WVC would be expected under normal conditions, which cor responds to a total reduction of 18.9%
In all countries except SCO, we found a decrease in WVC during periods of one or more weeks throughout the whole CRTR period
Summary
It has been estimated that some 194 million birds and 29 million mammals are killed annually on European roads (Grilo et al, 2020). Collisions with ungulates and other large mammals represent a major source of direct anthropogenic non-hunting wildlife mortality (Forman and Alexander, 1998) and socioeconomic costs associated with human injury, death and vehicle damage (Bisso nette et al, 2008; Niemi et al, 2017). It is an animal-welfare issue as a high proportion of animals are injured but not killed in the collision itself, are not always found and put to death, and live on with injuries or die from the injuries sometime after the accident (Putman et al, 2011). Other species that dominate the accident statis tics in parts of Europe are wild boar (Sus scrofa), red deer (Cervus ela phus), moose (Alces alces), and fallow deer (Dama dama) (Langbein et al, 2011; Linnell et al, 2020)
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