Patterns and Composition of Road-Killed Wildlife in Northwest Argentina

Abstract

Roads have important effects on wildlife, such as natural habitat fragmentation and degradation and direct killing of fauna, which leads to reductions in wildlife population size. We focused on a principal road in Northwest Argentina to test for the effect of seasonality and landscape features on the composition of road-killed wildlife. We conducted regularly scheduled road trips during the dry and wet seasons. We recorded the presence or absence of a vegetation curtain or hedge along the road. We measured land use by remote sensing in a 500 m buffer along the road. We compared the abundance of animals killed between seasons (dry and wet) for different taxonomic groups (mammals, birds and reptiles) and for different origins (domestic and native). We built linear mixed models to test the effect of landscape features on the abundance of killed animals. Two hundred and ninety-three individuals were killed, belonging to 35 species; 75.8 % were native and 24.2 % domestic species. The majority of animals killed were mid-sized mammals. More animals were killed during the dry season. The most important factors to explain the wildlife road-killing were the season and the proportion of agricultural landscape. The composition of the killed animals changed with the season. The proportion of agricultural landscape incremented the number of killed birds and mammals during both seasons, without affecting reptiles. The ratio of wild to domestic animals killed was dependent on the season. This study sets a precedent as the first in road ecology in Northwest Argentina and should be taken into account for road planning and regulation.