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Aim: Roads are a major threat for wildlife, degrading habitat and causing mortality via wildlife-vehicle collisions. In Latin America, the conjunction of high biodiversity and a rapidly expanding road network is reason for concern. We introduce an approach that combines species traits and habitat preferences to describe vulnerability and map areas of high roadkill risk. Thus, we present the first assessment of roadkill impacts for Latin American birds and mammals.

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Long-term monitoring of tropical forest animals lags far behind long-term monitoring of tropical forest plants, compromising ecologists' ability to identify parallel trends. On 257 occasions over 4 years, park guards in a newly protected lowland Amazonian forest in southeastern Peru tallied individuals of 31 reptile, bird, and mammal species sighted along a 47-km stretch of river. Each survey entailed *3 h of observation from a motorized boat; total survey effort was 892 h and *12,048 km. Our primary goals were descriptive: to establish baseline sighting rates for these species and to document trends over time and the influence of environmental and sampling factors on sightings. Our secondary goals were to identify the advantages and disadvantages of river-based monitoring and to assess how useful these data are for ecologists and protected areas managers. Over the 4 years of monitoring we observed 1.8 animals/km. More than 90% of recorded individuals belonged to seven common taxa: two reptiles, four birds, and one mammal. Season was the most frequent correlate of sighting frequency; sightings increased in dry season. For the majority of taxa common enough to analyze, sightings increased over the 4 years of monitoring; this is possibly a result of reduced hunting since the establishment of the protected area. Compared to forest-based surveys, river-based surveys were inefficient at recording most mammals. Results to date suggest that river-based surveys can be a valuable, inexpensive tool for monitoring some ecologically important Amazonian animals, and especially those in protected areas.

Millions of animals are killed on roads annually due to collisions with vehicles, particularly medium–large mammals. Studies on mammal road-kill flourished in Brazil in the last decade and an assessment of research on road-kill impacts at a country level will help define science-based conservation strategies. In this study, we used the compiled scientific literature to provide the state of knowledge on medium and large-sized mammals killed by road traffic in Brazil, their conservation status, and an approximation of the road-kill magnitude. We reviewed a total of 62 scientific papers that reported road-kill data accounting for 11.817 individuals. Of the 102 species of medium–large mammals found in the IUCN list, more than half (n = 62; 61%) were recorded as road-kill on Brazilian roads. The Carnivora order comprises over a quarter (n = 23; 37%) of the total road-killed species. A total of 9 species (14.5%) were classified as threatened, with a further 10 (16%) as Near Threatened. Over half of the road-killed species (n = 33, 53%) showed declining population trends according to their IUCN conservation status. Our extrapolation of the results for the entire Brazilian paved road network showed that the number of medium–large road-killed mammals can reach almost 9 million yearly (maximum 8.7 million; mean 1.3 million), representing a biomass of more than 10000 tons. The highest roadkill rates were recorded for common generalists and least concern species, although there were also threatened and near threatened species within the top 15 highest road-kill rates. The declining population trends found for most species reflect serious conservation concerns, since there is a lack of information on the mortality effects at population levels. Our results suggest that medium–large mammals are severally affected by road mortality in Brazil. More investigations are needed at local and abundance population levels, in a way that allows the inclusion of road network as an important threat for target species impacted by road-kill in the national territory, in order to develop adequate plans to mitigate those impacts.