What influences road mortality rates of eastern grey kangaroos in a semi-rural area?

Jai M. Green-Barber, Julie M. Old

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

9 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Background: Roads have major ecological impacts on wildlife. Vehicle collisions most frequently impact large herbivores due to their larger home range compared to smaller animals, and higher population density compared to carnivores. Kangaroos (Macropus spp.) account for a large proportion of reported wildlife vehicle collisions that occur in N S W, Australia. We aimed to evaluate what influenced road mortality of eastern grey kangaroos (Macropus giganteus) in a temperate rural/suburban region. The location of roadkilled kangaroos found on or near two 1 km stretches of road in Richmond NSW was recorded throughout 2014 and 2015. Weather and moon phase data were recorded for the date of each roadkilled kangaroo. Transects were setup on both roads, and multiple road and landscape features, including the width of roadside, fence construction, habitat type, and distance from street lights measured at 50 m intervals. Data were analyzed to explore which landscape features and temporal factors influenced the occurrence of a roadkill hotspot. Results: More kangaroo road mortalities occurred during periods of low temperature and low rainfall, and these factors are likely to affect forage quality. Fewer mortalities occurred when rain was falling. A greater number of mortalities occurred during the waning gibbous phase of the lunar cycle. Significantly more road mortalities occurred a short distance from the end of a section of street lights. Conclusions: The findings suggest that illumination influences the likelihood of kangaroo road mortalities. Large herbivores are particularly sensitive to habitat fragmentation because they need unrestricted access to large continuous habitat. Knowledge of factors that influence where and when kangaroos are most likely to cross roads can be used to inform more targeted management strategies and improve future road design and habitat connectivity to reduce the incidence of wildlife vehicle collisions.
Original languageEnglish
Article number11
Number of pages10
JournalBMC Zoology
Volume4
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2019

Open Access - Access Right Statement

© The Author(s). 2019 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated

Keywords

  • Eastern grey kangaroo
  • marsupials
  • roadkill
  • roads
  • rural areas
  • wildlife

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