Road kills : Sequestering animal mortality on the roadways

Rahul Ashem *

Effective speed control measures and designing roads with animal in mind in the first place would make the biggest difference.

Roads are biological barrier to wildlife. The term "Roads" has become one of the most important threats to faunal diversity in the present scenario. It can be reconsidered as kinds of various ecological consequences including loss of habitat and fragmentation of a given environment.

Therefore, the connectivity of habitat and permeability of road systems has to be developed in mitigating the animal mortality rate on the roadways. Numerous studies have been demonstrated the ill effects of major roads on survival prospects of animal belonging to various environmental orders.

It is increasingly recognised that road kills even overwhelm the effects of poaching in driving many animal species to extinction. Several approaches and techniques can be develop to reduce the effects of roads and road mortality rate on animal populations by introducing animal crossing structures, summarise previous animal road mortality mitigation studies, describe common mitigation measures, and discuss factors that influence the overall effectiveness of mitigation strategies.

Animal killed on roadways is a signal threat to biological diversity that can have long term effects on ecosystem goods and services. Each year hundreds of animal are killed on the State roads (National Highway, State Highway, Districts and major corridor) that crawl off the road to die after being hit and nor do they account for all species. On the forested road, the arboreal reptiles were sometimes affected, the highest percent being those that were diurnal followed by the nocturnal crepuscular and both day and night active species.

Meanwhile on the urban road, mortality rate is more habitual on large animals like Manipuri's ponies and domestic cow in comparison to other small species like goat, dog, hen, duck and even cat. A study on road literature on the accident suggests that vehicle/animal collisions are important to biologists and transportation officials alike. Likewise, vehicular traffic on roads can be direct sources of animal mortality and in some instances, can be catastrophic to populations.

In recent years, Manipuri ponies has become a victim of road kills because such animal are attracted to roads for an important resource (e.g., food) and are able to avoid oncoming cars or other conditions like lead to weak or non-existent effects of roads and traffic on animal abundance. According to history, it is believed that Manipuri's ponies are descended from Mongolian wild horses crossed with Arabian species, is not only indigenous, rare and endangered species but also has a close connection with the culture of Manipur.

It is considered as a sacred mount to the god, Marjing, one of the guardian deities of the four direction of the valley of Meities. Worshippers who come to the sacred groves of Marjing in the village of Heingang, offer little pony statue at the smaller shrines to Samadon Ayangba.

Even the strings of Pena (traditional music instrument) are made from the hairs of its tail. So it becomes an important factor to save the Manipuri ponies for the survival of ecosystem services and habitats as well as to the human environment before being late.

The need of the hour is to increase the government efforts in promoting awareness on Manipuri's ponies about the various aspects on road safety and its social and economic implications of road accidents and what needs to be done to curb the rising menace of road accidents. This would enable and empower the different stakeholders to play a meaningful role in promoting road safety.

Frog is another species that appears to have become an easy prey for the roadways. Frog plays a major role in maintaining the ecological services of a given environment during the monsoon season. Likewise, the increasing demand of frog meat in the state has become a lucrative illicit industry in the state.

In contrast to road kills, Pangolin is one such example in the state whose meat and scales are smuggled to illegal markets where the parts are used to create potions believed to have aphrodisiac properties.

There is perhaps no greater anthropogenic influence on landscape connectivity than roads. Roads have both direct (animal mortality) and indirect (loss of landscape permeability resulting in fragmentation) effects. Animal species with the highest population numbers were also the species most often killed by vehicles.

Overall, vehicle-caused animal mortality does not appear to have a significant negative impact on large mammal populations in the surrounding environment. However, road-killed animal carcasses appear to be a significant source of nutrition for some individual carnivores and scavengers whose home ranges encompass animal carcass disposal sites.

In fact, the State of Manipur is the storehouse of biological diversity which includes 4000 angiospermic plants species, 430 medicinal plants species, 34 edible fungi species, 500 orchid species and 55 species of bamboo, 40 endemic rice cultivars, 160 fish species and 21 species of migratory aquatic birds.

An environment rich in biological diversity offers the broadest array of options for sustainable economic activity. However, the State of Manipur is now facing the problems of biodiversity degeneration due to varied reasons.

The loss of biodiversity often reduces the productivity of ecosystems, thereby shrinking nature s baskets of goods and services, from which we constantly draw. The time has come to attempt a complete review of the empirical literature on effects of roads and traffic on animal abundance and distribution. Amphibian's reptiles and birds tended to show little positive effects or no effects at all. Small or medium size mammals generally showed the positive sign.

There is at present no standardised method for data collection of animal killed on roads and difficult to quantify the threat of road kills accident in the state. Effective conservation is a multi level task to play a part to ensure the future of our wildlife. Driving slowing and more carefully especially at dawn, dusk and at night can save animal lives all over the state and nowhere more so perhaps than in the amazing wildlife diversity.

Majority of the animal kills on the roadways are of young ones and adult generation. The study also suggests various measures such as slashing of verges at the appropriate time, use of speed cameras and educational and public awareness campaigns.

In recognition of the growing threats that roads and other linear intrusions pose to wildlife conservation in India, the National Board for Wildlife under the Ministry of Environment, Forests and climate change prepared a comprehensive background paper and guidelines regarding commissioning, maintaining and realigning linear intrusions such as the roads in wildlife areas.

Furthermore, the emphasis for securing wildlife from adverse impacts of roads was clearly articulated in the National Wildlife Action Plan.