Rachel Stockwell, research assistant, Project Splatter
What can we learn from wildlife roadkill? Roads and their associated traffic have adverse effects on local wildlife such as habitat fragmentation, disturbance and ultimately mortality through collisions with cars. But how much of an impact are roads having on our UK wildlife and which species are prevalent as roadkill? To address these questions, which have important conservation implications, Project Splatter was created in January 2013. Project Splatter - ‘Social media PLATform for Estimating Roadkill’ - is a citizen science research project run from Cardiff University, which collates wildlife roadkill reports sent in by members
of the public via social media. Using these reports we map wildlife roadkill locations and provide feedback on the data to our followers through graphs, maps and a weekly ‘Splatter Report’, the latter of which details what has been spotted that week and by whom. To date we have received over 19,000 reports, 2% of which are from the Suffolk area (Figure 1). Mammals are most commonly reported to us (61%), with birds making up 35% and the remaining 4% consisting of amphibians, reptiles and ‘UFOs’; unidentified furry/ feathered objects.
Figure 1: Wildlife roadkill reports submitted by members of the public to Project Splatter January 2013 – May 2016, across the UK. Inset figure shows Project Splatter reports from Suffolk.
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