Pan-India wildlife lovers are posting the updates of roadside injured animals, birds or reptiles, helping researchers in mapping roadkill hotspots.
From Jharana wildlife sanctuary to Kumbhalgarh-Udaipur NP road, the wildlife corridor is becoming roadkill hotspot with the wildlife enthusiasts reporting roadkills of leopard and other rare animals and birds on the stretch in the last one month since the launch of application.
Till now the RoadWatch android application has received the information of 38 wild animals — including 13 reptiles, five mammals, seven different species of birds, zero amphibious and three unidentified animals injured on road sides.
According to wildlife researcher Radhika Bahagat, Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), maximum updates on wildlife road killings are from Kumbhalgarh-Udaipur NP road. Earlier deaths of two leopards also have been identified through the application.
Rohit Gangwal, another researcher associated with the project “I break for Wildlife” in Rajasthan zone, said, “With the installations of this application, we are constantly in touch with State Forest department.” “The application is helping us mark the location where we can put up speed limit signs with the help of forest department to save wild animals,” he said. “People increase the speed of their vehicles whenever they see crossing cats on roads,” Gangwal added.
Recently, a scaled viper was spotted on Devarayanadurga SF Road, Tumkur, Karnataka. The application has been designed to gather necessary data such as photographic record, Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) location, type of animal and date of records.
“The interface is easy to use and allows users to acquire and transmit the data in less than a minute, with minimal effort. The idea was to build a user friendly and reliable system to collect roadkill information with a high degree of accuracy,” said Wildlife Trust of India’s Jose Louies.
“This application will help in mapping roadkill hotspots, identifying the worst affected species and assessing the efficacy of existing mitigation measures”, said Radhika Bhagat, a wildlife researcher working on the project.
The gathered data will be open source. This will potentially assist in the better planning of linear infrastructure such as roads.
WTI and Devid Shepherd wildlife are also planning to initiate a nationwide ‘I brake for wildlife’ campaign with the aim of developing awareness about and gradually reducing the incidence of wildlife roadkills across the country.