Journal of Threatened Taxa |
www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 January 2022 | 14(1): 20517–20522
ISSN 0974-7907
(Online) | ISSN 0974-7893 (Print)
https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.7713.14.1.20517-20522
#7713 | Received 19
October 2021 | Final received 17 November 2021 | Finally accepted 30 December
2021
Wildlife at the crossroads: wild
animal road kills due to vehicular collision on a mountainous highway in
northwestern Himalayan region
Muzaffar A. Kichloo
1, Asha Sohil 2 &
Neeraj Sharma 3
1 Department of Environmental
Sciences, Govt. Degree College, Banihal, Union
Territory of Jammu & Kashmir 182146, India.
2 P.G. Department of Environmental
Sciences, University of Jammu, Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir 180006,
India.
3 Institute of Mountain
Environment, Bhaderwah Campus University of Jammu,
Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir 182222, India.
1 omar.mzfr@gmail.com
(corresponding author), 2 ashasohil04@gmail.com, 3 nirazsharma@gmail.com
Editor: Priya Davidar, Sigur Nature Trust, Nilgiris,
India. Date of publication: 26
January 2022 (online & print)
Citation: Kichloo,
M.A., A. Sohil & N. Sharma (2022). Wildlife at
the crossroads: wild animal road kills due to vehicular collision on a mountainous
highway in northwestern Himalayan region. Journal of Threatened Taxa 14(1): 20517–20522. https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.7713.14.1.20517-20522
Copyright: © Kichloo et al. 2022. Creative Commons Attribution
4.0 International License. JoTT allows unrestricted use, reproduction, and
distribution of this article in any medium by providing adequate credit to the
author(s) and the source of publication.
Funding: No funding
was received for the study.
Competing interests: The authors
declare no competing interests.
Acknowledgements: We would like to express our
gratitude to the Rector Bhaderwah Campus, University
of Jammu and Head, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Jammu
for their administrative support. The Department of Wildlife Protection is
thanked for their unwavering support and patronage.
Abstract: Wildlife mortality due to
vehicular collision is well known across the world and the number of such
incidences is steadily rising in Himalaya as well. To assess the quantum of
wildlife road kills, we conducted an intensive survey spanning 33 months along
a mountainous National Highway 244 in the Union Territory of Jammu &
Kashmir. Forty-nine wild animal carcasses of 13 species of higher vertebrates
were observed lying on the road, shoulders, edges, and valley slopes. These
included seven mammals, four birds, and two reptiles. This survey, first of its
kind in this part of the Himalaya would be helpful in understanding the
underlying reasons of the rising wildlife fatalities on the hill roads,
identifying susceptible hotspots, and developing measures to address this new
threat to Himalayan wildlife. We recommend creating wildlife passages, raising
speed halters, and placing warning signages in vulnerable sections to reduce
the road-related wildlife mortality in such mountainous highways.
Keywords: Carcasses, dumping sites,
mammals, mortality, National Highway, non-protected areas, road kills, speed
halters, wildlife fatalities, wildlife passages.
Roads are the leading cause of
anthropogenic mortality after legal harvesting for many vertebrates world over
(Hill et al. 2019). The effect of roads on wildlife is multidimensional, from
habitat loss and fragmentation (Burnett 1992; Richardson et al. 1997; Carr & Fahring 2001),
altering movement and distribution patterns (Newmark et al. 1996; Desai &
Baskaran 1998), affecting breeding (Reijnen et al.
1995), and causing injury and mortality by vehicular collisions (Das et al.
2007; Seshadri et al. 2009; Baskaran & Boominathan
2010; Hill et al. 2019; Schwartz et al. 2020). This barrier effect and
wildlife-vehicular collisions are predicted to worsen as road network and
traffic intensity rise internationally. The incidents of mammal-vehicle
collisions have increased dramatically since the early 1970s (Hill et al.
2019).
India has the world’s second
largest road network, with a total road length of 6.2 million km (Ministry of
Road Transport and Highways 2021). A country with such a massive road system
puts animals that scurry or move across the highways in grave danger. The Union Territory (UT) of Jammu &
Kashmir has seen a massive rise in national highway expansion, up about 194
percent from 823 km in 2003, to 2,433 km now, accounting for 1.8 percent of
India’s entire national highway network (Ministry of Road Transport and
Highways 2021).
Indian Himalayan region with a
wide range of habitats support unique arrays of biodiversity and ecosystem
services both within and outside of the protected areas. The non-protected
areas (Non-PAs) in the Indian Himalaya house a good number of wildlife species
(Thapa et al. 2021) which are ecological generalists and possess good amount of
behavioural plasticity (Buchi
& Vuilleumier 2014; Gaynor et al. 2018). These
non-PAs lack scientific monitoring and management strategies to conserve
wildlife species which increases the risk of them coming in close proximity to human-dominated
areas and thus becoming vulnerable to several fatalities including vehicular
collisions. Apart from a few short-term studies on wildlife road kills (Gokula 1997; Sunder 2004; Das et al. 2007; Seshadri et al.
2009; Baskaran & Boominathan 2010; Bhupathy et al. 2011; Kumar & Srinivasulu
2015; Samson et al. 2016; Santhoshkumar et al. 2017;
Hatti & Mubeen 2019), no major study has
been conducted in India or in the western Himalaya, emphasizing the fact
that very little attention is being paid to the impacts of roads and highways
on wildlife. In order to assess the quantum of road kills in the region, we
monitored wildlife road kills on National Highway 244 (NH-244), which connects Batote (Jammu) to Kashmir Valley, in the UT of Jammu &
Kashmir. The highway creates a dangerous terrain for wildlife that live besides
it, as evident by the number of road kill reports that have piled up over the
years.
Material and Methods
To understand the frequency of
road kills, their likely causes and the wild animal species exposed to the
accidents, we carried out surveys on NH-244, connecting Batote
(Jammu) to Kashmir Valley. Upgraded to a national highway in 2016, the road is
currently undergoing upgrades, including widening of the lanes and construction
of extensive tunnels. The highway, which is built into the mountainside, criss-crosses multiple perennial streams and runs the
substantial length of the Chenab gorge. Located between 823 and 1,638 m, the
corridor is characterized with a broad range of habitats, including
sub-temperate broad-leaved mixed forests interspersed with pure conifer
patches, dry open scrub, rocky slopes, villages and urban areas, supporting a
rich biodiversity. Our study was limited to 120 km stretch on NH-244, from Batote, a sub-urban township to Kishtwar
town (Figure 1). The highway was surveyed by car twice a month for a period of
two years and nine months, from January 2018 to December 2019 and from December
2020 to August 2021. No surveys could be conducted during 2020 due to COVID-19 restrictions.
The road kills sighted during the whole effort were identified up to the
species level (except for reptiles). The spatial attributes of the accident
site were recorded and the carcasses were removed from the road to avoid
repetitive counts. No specimens were collected during the survey.
Results and
Discussion
During the surveys, we recorded
49 road kills involving 13 species of higher vertebrates (Table 1; Image 1a-g),
including seven species of mammals, four species of birds, and two species of
reptiles. Golden Jackal Canis aureus,
Rhesus Macaque Macaca mulatta,
and Red Fox Vulpes vulpes suffered the most
fatalities among the mammals (Table 1). Two carcasses each of globally
threatened Common Leopard Panthera pardus and Himalayan Vulture Gyps himalayensis were also observed during the surveys. The
data analysis revealed an encounter rate of 0.40 road kills/km and most of the
road kill aggregations were found near Batote, a
vital junction intersecting the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway (NH-44). The
location of carcasses found during the surveys is shown in Figure 2.
The animal carcasses so observed
indicated that these species were struck or overrun by speeding vehicles
especially during night as most of victims were nocturnal. During the night,
animals can be seen roaming around the marketplaces and rubbish dumps in search
of food. Predators also make their way down the mountainside in search of water
and food sources. As a result, these animals are subjected to rash and reckless
driving and end up in road mishaps. Our study found that mammals are affected
more than other taxa, mostly including
nocturnal animals. In many instances, the authors observed that species
like Red Fox and Golden Jackal get traumatized in front of the high beam lights
of vehicles and get transfixed on the road and ultimately fall victim to
speeding vehicles. Another vulnerable group is the scavengers that are drawn to
the roadside dead animal carcasses and eventually get killed. Although the
numbers of these taxa seem to be very small, such loss is insufferable
considering their slow life histories and low population densities (Baskaran
& Boominathan 2010). The secondary information
obtained as a result of casual conversation with regularly plying drivers
substantiates an increase in wild animal sightings, notably vultures, kites,
civets, jackals and common leopards in recent years.
The wildlife in the Himalaya is
subjected to many threats including the one under discussion that needs to be
seriously addressed and appropriately dealt with. Assessment of wildlife
vehicular mortality is important to understand road impacts, effects on local
population of wildlife, to decipher the accident-prone hotspots, and identify
the factors underlying the animal road fatalities (Carvalho & Mira 2010;
Taylor & Goldingay 2010). Our survey may not have reported all the road
kills as many of the carcasses remain hidden beneath structures or
foliage, or are removed by other motorists, authorities, or scavenger animals
before being discovered (Dickerson 1939; Vestjens
1973; Coulson 1982; Taylor & Goldingay 2003), like an incident of setting afire a leopard carcass near Batote.
The study revealed a major road kill cluster around Batote
township, which may be because of the presence of open waste dumping site
located by the side of the road as well as a water channel fulfilling feeding
and water demands of wild animals. Given the current grim situation and
foreseeing the highway expansion that would exacerbate already existing
threats, necessitates call for scientifically-based mitigation measures. These
include construction of wildlife passages at vulnerable sections especially the
below-road crossing structures like culverts for larger species and drainage
pipes for small size species (Chen et al. 2021), maintaining a wide field of
view for drivers and wildlife, widening shoulders to facilitate wait and go
calls, planting caution boards and laying speed breakers near water bodies and
dumping sites, sensitizing the drivers and organising
citizens to build a reliable dataset for better analysis.
Table 1. Road kills recorded on
NH-244 during the sampling period.
Species |
Common name |
IUCN status |
Number |
Habitat
type |
Altitude (in m) |
Mammals 1. Panthera pardus |
Common Leopard |
VU |
2 |
PF, BD |
1000–1415 |
2. Vulpes vulpes |
Red Fox |
LC |
3 |
PF, BD, OS |
1224–1580 |
3. Canis aureus |
Golden Jackal |
LC |
12 |
PF, BD, OS, UR |
990–1332 |
4. Paguma larvata |
Himalayan Palm Civet |
LC |
2 |
PF, BD |
890–940 |
5. Viverricula indica |
Small Indian Civet |
LC |
2 |
OF, UR |
934–1244 |
6. Macaca mulatta |
Rhesus Macaque |
LC |
7 |
PF, BD, OS, UR |
910–1310 |
7. Eoglaucomys fimbriatus |
Kashmir Flying Squirrel |
LC |
2 |
PF |
1100–1246 |
Birds 8. Gyps himalayensis |
Himalayan Vulture |
NT |
2 |
PF |
1250 |
9. Milvus migrans |
Black Kite |
LC |
3 |
OS, UR |
1140–1402 |
10. Pycnonotus cafer |
Red-vented Bulbul |
LC |
2 |
OS |
1016–1456 |
11. Acredotheres tristis |
Common Myna |
LC |
3 |
OS, UR |
944–1113 |
Reptiles 12. Snake sp. |
- |
- |
2 |
UR |
943–1105 |
13. Calotes sp. |
- |
- |
7 |
OS, UR |
946–1510 |
VU—Vulnerable | NT—Near
Threatened | LC—Least Concern | PF—Pine forests | OS—Open Scrub |
BD—Broadleaved mixed | UR—Urban areas.
For
figures & images - - click here
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