Creating a Road Less Fatal for Birds

For Birds, Creating a Road

According to a study published in The Journal of Wildlife Management in 2014 by Loss, et al., between 89 million and 340 million birds are struck and killed by vehicles on American roads each year. This problem might at first seem insoluble. How can we prevent free-flying birds from colliding with fast-moving vehicles? There’s really no obvious solution. There’s no buffer that you could realistically add to a car that would reduce the likelihood of a bird fatality in a collision, and there are way too many miles of road to install barriers to encourage birds to avoid the roadway — so perhaps we will have to simply live with the problem. But should we?

I have usually found that when humans make a real effort to think through and solve a problem, we often find unexpected solutions. So, here’s a challenge for you: See if you can come up with an idea to solve this issue and email it to me at mparr@abcbirds.org. In the meantime, here are a few thoughts to get started.

As far as I know, I have struck — and presumably killed — two birds in my lifetime. One was a male Indigo Bunting being chased by another bunting. They came hurtling out of the scrub right next to me. I had no time to react. The second was a Horned Lark in South Dakota — a similar situation, in which the lark flew up from the side of the road too late for me to brake. I will never forget how each incident made me feel (terrible) and it reminds me how a split-second can change everything. Anyway, that’s two birds, that I know of, in a lifetime. Not a large data set I suppose, but that’s two birds in about 40 years of driving — or 0.05 birds per year. If we extrapolate that to the 230 million or so licensed drivers in the U.S., we would have a total of around 11 million birds.

Figuring out how many birds one person has killed while driving is difficult — often, we probably are unaware when we strike small birds. And knowing how many birds are killed on America’s highways each year is a surprisingly complex issue, given that mortality can vary depending upon type of road, type of vehicle, driver habits, species, location, and other factors. In addition, it’s hard to consistently detect avian roadkill due to various factors, including scavengers that consume potential data. Fortunately, since publication of the 2014 study mentioned at the start, there have been many quantitative studies of road mortality in birds, and others keep coming out, focused in a growing number of countries.

But personal experiences are important, too. We should all be more aware of this issue. After all, it’s all around us. If you do the math for yourself, please send me your peryear number (as well as the species). If enough ABC members provided that figure, it could provide some useful data.

Next, on to avoidance. I notice that most of the species that I can readily identify as roadkill as I drive past are Turkey Vultures, Canada Geese, and owls. I’d be interested to know what your most regularly seen road-killed bird species are. This may be a clue to how we can address the issue. Presumably, vultures fall victim because they feed on road-killed animals. Is there a way to accelerate removal of carcasses from roads, I wonder? Canada Geese are likely to graze on mowed roadside verges. What if we allowed verges to grow? This might attract grassland birds, though — and put them more at risk....

And as for owls, I wonder if there is a light component that could be added to headlights to make them more visible to owls. Owls’ eyes are built differently from those of diurnal birds, but they can still detect ultraviolet light at night. What if there was a way to introduce an oscillating UV signal to headlights invisible to humans, but that would appear as a flashing light to owls? I am betting that there are bird researchers and engineers reading this who might know enough to get us started on the right path.

Finally, for now, there’s the issue of collision hotspots. We’ve all heard of car-accident trouble spots — what they call accident black spots in the

Less Fatal?

United Kingdom where I grew up. The same is undoubtedly true for car-bird collisions. One such area that I am very familiar with is the causeway to Chincoteague Island on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. The roadway is a carnage zone for marshnesting birds such as Laughing Gulls and Clapper Rails. Perhaps some form of durable barrier could be installed in such critical hotspots during the breeding season, sufficient to encourage birds to fly above the area where vehicles are moving? The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service suggests the use of poles, and signs asking drivers to slow down in hotspot areas. These may well work and could be tested.

To date, ABC has yet to take on this issue in a significant way, and it may very well be insoluble at a large scale, but if you have ideas, or would be interested in helping to fund an exploratory study to test solutions, please let me know. The lives of millions of birds per year may depend on it.

Over to you — for now! Thank you for supporting ABC and bird conservation!

Michael J. Parr, President

ABOVE: Short-eared Owl has a close call. Photo by Brent Barnes, Shutterstock.