Do highways without shoulders and proper mowing have more roadkill cases?

Abstract

Highways eliminate the diversity of animals due to roadkill, altering ecological patterns. The expansion of the road networklags behind the advancements in the field. The situation is worse for country lane, which are neglected by public managerssince they do not have shoulder not proper mowing. The influence of the lack of road shoulders and the periodic mowing onwildlife roadkill remains unknown. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate if the lack of road shoulders and periodic mowinginfluences the number of roadkill. Then, the diversity of road-killed vertebrates in road LMG-878 was described, as well astheir seasonality. The roadkill of highway MG-265 were compared with road shoulder and periodic mowing, and LMG-878,which has no road shoulder and no periodic mowing. T-tests with total values were used, as well as the data relativized bythe sampling effort to verify this difference. The LMG-878 was analyzed with species accumulation curves, an estimatorof richness to verify the potential for roadkill and seasonality. The comparison with other reports of roadkill was performedusing the indices described in the literature. Thus, the highways without shoulders and without periodic mowing have higheroccurrences of roadkill. The LMG-878 had 83 cases of roadkill, which included 25 cases for amphibians, 28 for birds, 25for mammals, and five for reptiles. The diversity of wildlife killed on roads may be even greater than what was found sincethe estimates of roadkill did not reach stability. The implementation of speed reducers or fauna passages to the places withthe highest rates of roadkill is recommended.