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July 18, 2023 • 14 mins

It's estimated that half a million animals die on Tasmanian roads each year. Britt Aylen investigates.

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Speaker 1 (00:01):
My heart Tazzy.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
If people are driving around and seeing a dead body
on the road and that isn't enough to make them
recognize their animals in the area, then the road signs.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Do it napping.

Speaker 3 (00:10):
It's estimated around half a million animals day on Tasmanian
roads each year. In fact, some call our state the
roadkilled capital of Australia. But why are our roads so dangerous?
And what can we do to make it better? My
name's britt Alan and this is iHeart Tassy. The Bonnarong

(00:32):
Wildlife Sanctuary in Brighton took almost fifteen thousand calls for
assistance in twenty twenty two, around forty percent of which
were road related. But why are Tassy roads so dangerous?

Speaker 1 (00:42):
A quick story I'll share with you.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
That's Greg Irons, the director at Bonnarong.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Was a gentleman who had never left Tasmania, who was
forty five years of age.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
He was born in Tasmania, it never left he went
to the mainland.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
When he came back, So how was his trip, he said, Oh, look,
it was incredible. You should see how good they are
at picking up the road kill over there. You just
don't see any And it didn't sort of click that
they didn't have the road kill that we had.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
It just figured that it was like that everywhere.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
So I think that's one thing that we've got to
do is just be aware and not accept that roadkill
is are part of our everyday life.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
The Wildlife Sanctuary works to rehabilitate native critters, many of
which come from our roads.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Well, it's a really shameful title to have, sadly in
TASiS basically the road kill capital of the world.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
When we look at our size and the amount of
animals killed.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
I mean, we're in the the city of somewhere between
two hundred and fifty to five hundred thousand animals killed
in our roads every year. And you know that doesn't
account for really small things and skinks and frogs and
things like that, So I mean the number could very
easily be a million.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
Wildlife density plays a big part.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
It is so hard because we are just loaded with wildlife,
which is an incredible blessing.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
I guess in one way, you know, we're not that
bad at driving. We do drive with our eyes open.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
But unfortunately there's just animals wherever you go, and so
that risk is always going to be high here than
anywhere else. But I think that's why we also need
to become world leaders, you know, the fact that there
are so many animals here. Rather than accepting it, than
saying okay, well it's just part and parcel of being
in Tasmania, we need to say the risk is higher,
so we need to be doing more than anywhere else

(02:16):
to try and reduce those numbers, because it's just not
a number that we should accept and move on. It's
devastating really.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
Many of our native species are also nocturnal, and creatures
like Tasmanian devils can be difficult to see against a
dark road. There's also the issue of habitat.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
There's a large body of water, if there's beautiful green
grass on the side of their own it's the middle
of summer that's going to attract animals in and of
course just being aware of course that you know, if
you're in an area that's obviously not as built up
and you know you've maybe gone camping or whatever it is,
there'll be a high density of wildlife as well.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
Roadkill mitigation has been approached on both the state and
local government level. Six months ago, the Tasmanian government introduced
its roadkill reporter app aiming to collect data and map
hotspots across the state. So far, it's seen around two thousand,
six hundred reports covering fifty three species of animal.

Speaker 4 (03:08):
So it covers everything from mammals, birds, reptiles, so snakes,
blue tongue lizards, things like that.

Speaker 3 (03:15):
This is doctor Samantha Fox from the Department of Natural
Resources and the Environment.

Speaker 4 (03:20):
We get a lot of birds come through. I think
we've even had a couple of insects, which is a
bit odd. So fifty three species is quite a lot
of species in six months. In the top twelve species
that we've had recorded, all three of our native dasyurids
are there, So the Eastern quoil, the spotted tail quil
and the Tasmanian devil are all in the top twelve

(03:43):
and soeth really sensitive things that you know, we really
need to be aware of, like our eastern bar bandicoots,
the Tasmanium beto, things that are really specific to Tasmania
that we want to make sure that they remain in
Tasmania and that they're there for our kids and our

(04:03):
grandkids to see. Because things like the Eastern quoal, the
Eastern bar bandicoot, they currently don't occur anywhere else in
Australia in the wild, so they are really important little species.

Speaker 3 (04:15):
Samoutha works with the Save the Tasmanian Devil program and
says roadkill is the second biggest threat to the endangered
species after devil facial tumor disease.

Speaker 4 (04:24):
So we lose a lot of devils on the roads.

Speaker 5 (04:26):
Every year, and on average we would lose between three
hundred and fifty to four hundred and fifty devils every
year to roadkill, so it's high and that's the only
numbers that are actually reported to us, so the likelihood
is that we lose a lot more than that.

Speaker 3 (04:41):
The free app is just one of many mitigation strategies.

Speaker 4 (04:45):
There's things like you're virtual fencing with the audible alert
and the flashing lights. So people often say that wildlife
need two levels of stimuli to really make them move,
So if you've got flashing lights and horn or an alarm,
it's more likely to make them move than just one

(05:07):
of those things.

Speaker 3 (05:08):
They've been trialed at multiple locations across the West Coast
on the Tarka and Forest. Drive signage and rumble strips
have been introduced to alert motorists to the presence of
wildlife in the area. Roadside and table drain clearage has
also been carried out to reduce animal foraging and shelter
and improve visibility.

Speaker 4 (05:26):
You can slash vegetation on the road side so there's
less vegetation for browsers to eat, in which case they're
less likely to be on the side of a road
when vehicles are traveling past them. But it also means
that if the vegetation is slashed, the drivers are also
more likely to be able to see wildlife and slow down.

Speaker 3 (05:46):
And just last month, working with the Safe the Devil program,
the Circular Head Council voted to reduce speed limits in
the Walnorth area in order to protect the vulnerable devil population.

Speaker 4 (05:56):
We've had the speed limit reduced from one hundred kilometers
to eighty klongs and we put some traffic counters on
the road six months apart. Through this period of education
and working with stakeholders and reducing speed limit and we
were able to get the speed limit reduced. People speeding

(06:17):
at night reduced by ninety three percent. So it can
mean a lot of time and energy, but if it's
something that really is urgent that needs that time, and
energy putting into it. You can get people to think
about how they travel on roads at night and help
preserve our wildlife.

Speaker 3 (06:38):
And it's not just government entities working to cut down
roadkill numbers. Coming up on iHeart Tazzy, we'll meet two
of the community organizations working to stamp out roadkill and
learn what we can do to be safer on our roads.

Speaker 1 (06:51):
My Hearts, My Heart as e.

Speaker 3 (06:58):
Ruth Waterhouse is an artist based Kingston and the woman
behind Friends of Sommily's Wildlife. Her activism began as a
way of honoring animals that lost their lives on a
road close to her home.

Speaker 6 (07:08):
So I would travel and see this almost on a
daily basis. And I'm also a wildlife care so I
dealt twig the outcome. So I was checking pouches and
pulling bodies off the road. And I realized also that
by pulling the bodies off the road, I was taking
away the reminders, you know, they weren't so obvious that

(07:29):
this was such a bad hotspot.

Speaker 3 (07:31):
So Ruth began to place a marker for each creature
that she found.

Speaker 6 (07:35):
My third kind of gut reaction was that I had
to do something to highlight the death. So yes, I
made little markers and you know, some people, well most people,
let's put it that way, went wow. It was a
visual reminder of what was happening. And in the end
when we did the flowers, because the community actually can
help me, it was visually poignantly stunningly beautiful, but really

(08:00):
really sad as well, and that affected people.

Speaker 3 (08:03):
Now, the organization produces signs featuring photos of rescued wildlife
black with yellow text. You may have seen them on
roads or outside houses across the state. Ruth says she's
printed around fifteen hundred so far with pictures from her
own collection and from other wildlife cares.

Speaker 6 (08:19):
So they are so much more meaningful than you know,
tugging an image from the internet. These are animals that,
you know, I'd say ninety percent of them have come
to grief on our roads, and being a wildlife care,
we all put in so much effort to get these
animals back out doing the world. And I'm very grateful
that the wildlife community came on board because it's made it.

(08:40):
You know, people drive around the countryside and go, oh,
there's another one. Oh it's different, what's this one? And
that's keeping the awareness going and eventually, you know, local
governments and politicians will notice how many they are and
they might do something about it.

Speaker 3 (08:53):
Another group tackling the issue is the Tamar Valley Wildlife
Roadkill Initiative, sounded by Bruce George after he moved to
the state with his wife seven years ago.

Speaker 7 (09:02):
Because we came from Canberra and chose to live in
low Head, it requires us to go to Lon System
to do our major shopping and medical things. And in
that forty five minute trip to lon Sstm then back again,
one is continually passing these broken bodies lying on the roads.

(09:25):
You know, then you see they're a large for feathers
of birds, animals that haven't died, that lying there in pain,
and that to me was sufficient reason to start a
group that might do something to reduce the number of
animals going through this.

Speaker 3 (09:46):
The organization's key focuses our driver education and research.

Speaker 7 (09:50):
The more we can get this outfit to the driving public,
and the better they can understand the problem and what
they can do about it, the greater the impact we
will have. You can imagine the number of drivers that
we have on our roads and the necessity to reach

(10:12):
as many as possible but we also place a lot
of tension to research and to working with government and
other groups. And it's also useful, very important in fact,
to actually have people out there attending to animals that

(10:33):
are injured on their own.

Speaker 3 (10:35):
Bruce believes more data is needed to identify roadial hotspots
and at risk creatures.

Speaker 7 (10:40):
We also need to know the extent of the wildlife
population the vacies that are affected, so we need to
know where to target the worst areas and all that
would be helped if we had the accurate statistic.

Speaker 3 (11:04):
Outside of virtual fencing, speed limit reduction, and community education,
one thing agreed upon by activists and government entities alike
is that personal responsibility plays a huge part in preventing roadkill.
Greg Iyans from Bonarong says, we can all make small
changes when we hit the road.

Speaker 2 (11:21):
You don't have to wait for a speed limit to
change legally to make the decision to drive a bit slower.
You know, that is something that every individual can do
and say right from here on in, I will not
drive over.

Speaker 1 (11:33):
Eighty k is an hour between dusk and door. There's
a really.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
Simple one there. And every time you miss an animal
by ten or twenty meters you've.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
Just saved a life through making a decision. So that's
one really really good one to keep in mind.

Speaker 3 (11:45):
He also recommends timing a drive so you're not on
the road at dusk or dawn.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
So if I'm heading to the other end of the
stage where I've got to head to the east coast
or wherever it might be, I will always plan my
drive time to be during daylight hours, so that way
I'm not going to encounter these animals in the first place.
I also don't have to drive slower without feeling guilt
of going too fast and putting an animal's life at risk.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
So look, that's another really really simple one.

Speaker 2 (12:09):
And obviously it's safe for both the wildlife and us
when we're driving in daylight hours as well, So that's
one to certainly keep in mind.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
And then a lot of it's just about awareness.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
You know, I think we've seen the road signs, they'd
have a picture of an animal, but they don't even
compute for us because we're so used to seeing animals
all over the place and TAZZI. So a bit of
a campaign that I've been on is to try and
get people to associate roadkill.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
With remembering that there are animals in that area, you know.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
And that's why we don't believe the road signs are
that effective to be honest, for wildlife. If people are
driving around and seeing a dead body on the road
and that isn't enough to make them recognize their animals
in the area, then the.

Speaker 1 (12:45):
Road signs doing nothing.

Speaker 2 (12:47):
So if we can start training our brains to say, okay,
there's a dead animal on the road over there, that
means there's wildlife here, I'm going to drive slower for
the next ten minutes. And even that little sacrifice of
time makes a big difference.

Speaker 3 (13:00):
Do hit a creature, The recommendation is to pull your
car over if it's safe to.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
Do so, So don't leave your car hanging out on
the road.

Speaker 2 (13:06):
I'm sure you can pull over entirely and stop to
see if that animal can be helped or.

Speaker 1 (13:10):
Whether there's a baby in the pouch, because you.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
Know, even if the accident's happen, let's at least not
leave it there to suffer.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
You can call us twenty four hours a day, seven
days a week. We're always there to help.

Speaker 2 (13:20):
And the other thing, of course, is removing a dead
animal from the road prevents other carnivores coming to eat
that animal and then they get hit.

Speaker 1 (13:29):
So it's a really simple.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
Thing to do that you could save a baby or
two's life or help an animal not suffer.

Speaker 3 (13:35):
The contact number for Bonarong is four four seven Animal.
While roadkill numbers are growing, awareness seems to be growing too.
With more research, more people using the row Kill Reporter app,
and more data available, it's hoped animal fatality numbers will
soon take a turn. The Department of Natural Resources and
the Environments doctor Samantha Fox, we just.

Speaker 4 (13:55):
Ask people, if they have a chance to log row kill,
to get on and use it, because that's the only
way that we can then share this data with councils
and road managers so that they're aware of any possible
hotspots in their area that they can then look at
possible mitigation. It's impossible to really do anything about a

(14:17):
problem unless you have the data, and so that really
has to be the base starting point is collecting the
data to then provide that to road managers so that
they can make an informed choice about what they do
about it.

Speaker 3 (14:32):
That's it for this week's episode of iHeart Tazzy. If
you want to get in touch, you can email. Ihearttazzy
at arn dot com dot au. I'm Bruce Alen. Thanks
for your company.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
iHeart Tazzi
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