Doing something to stop roadkill

The first paragraph of an article in Royalauto on Flinders Island (August 2012, p 35) tells us that any drive at dusk or dawn in remote areas 'will be rewarded only with carnage' of wallabies and pademelons.

Roadkill is driving some species towards extinction all over the world.

There are too many cars and trucks on many more roads than before that go through their habitats. Tunnels and overheads for animals' safe crossing are used in some places. This can help a little at locations where many animals get run over, but does not solve the problem.

At present some people may try to save the wounded and the infants whose mothers are squashed, but that is kindness too late.

A British man eats road-kill as his way of preventing waste, and there are American recipe books. We may be driven to this too.

Or we could do something to prevent roadkill instead of taking it as a fact of life/death.

A speed-limit of forty miles per hour at night and dusk in wild-life country would save accidents as well as roadkill. More careful night-driving through countrysides and slower driving through bushland could prevent so many deaths and so many orphaned creatures.

A campaign to stop carelessness about road-kill could make it shameful to feel proud about how many creatures a driver manages to kill on one trip.

The RACV could ask how many drivers know they have driven over animals, to arouse awareness. Let's have some idea of the tally.

People could put ribbons and flowers around trees near roadkill, as with human deaths, but just slightly different. "Of Tasmanian roadkill, 70 per cent are hit in roadkill blackspots, which only exist on small sections of the road," said scientist Alistair Hobday.

We could ask for inventions. For example, a form of warning animals up to four minutes ahead that a car or truck is coming, used in places and at times that creatures are liable to be hit. Headlights can simply paralyse animals in the middle of the road

Could we have a Peace and Saving Museum? What do people feel is their own greatest collective guilt? There's a lot of it around, not just roadkill. What about a Universal Guilt Day – making a real Day of Atonement – followed by attempts at prevention.

People do not realize the extent of the mayhem, but the Internet can remedy that.

Ten minutes on Google can find you a whole lot of sensitive and insensitive things done and thought about roadkill. Is it for this that someone has saved ten minutes on the road?

The more people, the more roadkill. Do we need to cut our own murderous population?

Merritt Clifton, editor of Animal People Newspaper, estimated that the following animals are being killed by motor vehicles in the United States annually:41 million squirrels, 26 million cats, 22 million rats, 19 million opossums, 15 million raccoons, 6 million dogsand 350,000 deer.

"One hundred and ten thousand brushtail possums, 30,000 pademelons, 16,000 wallabies. More than 3000 Tasmanian Devils. At least 300,000 mammals and birds are killed every year. That's an average of one every two minutes, just in Tasmania," claims scientist Dr Alistair Hobday, who has compiled the figures in one of the most extensive roadkill studies in the world. "Pretty much everything that lives in Tasmania, we've seen dead on the road,"

"Nearly 300,000 animals are killed on Tasmanian roads every year. Among them, 4000 Tasmanian devils - about 5 per cent of a population already being dying from an infectious cancer," claimed Michelle Paine back in November, 2008.

This site has pathetic pictures of roadkill including a little bird mourning its dead mate.

See also Australian Wildlife RoadKill, A Wild Discovery Guide with Len Zell. Wild Discovery, PO Box 1696 Townsville Qld 4810 ISBN 0-9757184-3-6 RRP: A$19.95.

Roadkillwas shortlisted for the 2007 Whitley Award for significant contribution to Australian zoology. This is the essential 'in-car' book for any road traveller in Australia. With about one million kilometres of road, anyone travelling them is, sadly, very likely to see or cause roadkill – certainly of the millions of small bugs that will be hit. This book provides an overview of the types of roadkill, hints on what to do with them, how to clean bugs off the car and an eclectic mix of other information – from road safety to recipes. In addition the book gives an unusual insight into the many aspects of Australia's very special fauna, albeit in a somewhat macabre way. More than 200 photographs of roadkill, some identification and an excellent guide on how to avoid and observe roadkill and, who to send interesting specimens to.

The humour about roadkill is macabre. "Due to the creative genius of one Charlie Conroy whom we proudly claim as one of our own, we are excited to announce a world first, the ABZ of ROADKILL. This is a photographic competition open to all bikers worldwide, it is designed to utilise something that would otherwise just lie around going to waste, and is currently regarded just as something to stay upwind of and to avoid hitting when it is lying in the middle of the road. This comp is aimed as a small way of making their sacrifice worthwhile and at the same time offending the general population. Both worthy aspirations of any genuine bikers!"

Roadkilltoys is a novel designer toy boutique, creating original plush toy characters. "We make toys with a twist. Toys as dark as the inside of an extra large cowpat."

' It may be tempting to believe our 4WD has bumped over a wombat,' (from an article in a magazine.) Tempting?

Let's stop laughing and do something to stop roadkill before yet more creatures are extinct.