A map of badger roadkill hotspots in the UK has been generated by a team from Cardiff University to help prevent wildlife-vehicle collisions in the future.
Cardiff University's Road Lab project assessed where and why badgers are involved in vehicle collisions, identifying 2,248 hotspots of wildlife-vehicle collisions. The hotspots represent areas that are in the top 1% of badger roadkill risk, finding the majority located within central and southern England.
The new research is the first detailed assessment of the distribution and factors driving European badger wildlife-vehicle collisions risk in Great Britain.
Dr Sarah Raymond, who carried out the work during her PhD at Cardiff University's School of Biosciences, said: "Wildlife-vehicle collisions are the second greatest direct cause of wildlife mortality worldwide, representing a major threat to wildlife populations. In the UK, there are more than 245,100 miles of roads and over 41 million registered vehicles. Understanding the factors that contribute to wildlife-vehicle collisions is vital for mitigating mortality of wildlife and conserving species."
We aimed to identify hotspots of particularly high wildlife-vehicle collisions and create an open-access searchable map, to aid decision-making in conservation and prevent wildlife roadkill.
In collaboration with Badger Trust, the researchers analysed 10 years of roadkill records, from 2014-2023 and 2017-2023, to highlight the hotspots of roadkill risk across Great Britain and understand what aspect of habitat, climate and human infrastructure may relate to increased risk.
At a national level, the researchers found strong overlap between roadkill risk and live badger distribution. But, on a hotspot level, this wasn't as simple, and roadkill hotspots are not simply related to the presence of badgers in the area. Other factors may contribute to an increase in roadkill risk, such as badger and driver behaviour, as well as features of the road, habitat, and landscape.
Areas clustered around large cities and towns were identified as having a relatively high roadkill risk but low live badger occurrence.
"Previous research has found that urban areas are predicted to have low suitability for badgers, due to the lack of suitable grassland and woodland habitats. Despite this, previous research has also found that badger roadkill risk increases with road density.
"Our results suggest that, although the occurrence of live badgers in urban areas is generally lower, when badgers do occur in these habitats, they face a relatively high risk of being involved in wildlife-vehicle collisions," added Dr Raymond.
Dr Sarah Perkins, Cardiff University's Road Lab project, said: "This research would not have been possible without members of the public reporting their sightings. With nearly 20,000 badger reports, our findings clearly show just how valuable citizen science can be for conservation insight."
By generating a cohesive picture of wildlife roadkill risk across the UK with a large open-access dataset, this work is an initial first step in translating roadkill hotspots into effective conservation management. The hotspots that we identify can support conservation and policy relating to reducing wildlife roadkill and raise awareness of the extent of the issue.
The research, Identifying hotspots and drivers of wildlife-vehicle collision risk using citizen science data: a case study focused on the European badger Meles meles , was published in Biological Conservation.
