Eyes on the Road, Please!

Eyes on the Road, Please!

Vinod M Kumar

Indian Black Turtle (Melanochelys trijuga)

We all must’ve heard the phrase “Keep your eyes on the road”. But have you ever literally did that? I started doing that a year back when I was volunteering for ATREE-ACCC’s research work inside the Kalakad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve aka KMTR, India’s southernmost tiger habitat. ATREE has been assessing the impact on the biodiversity of the areas surrounding the famous Sorimuthu Ayyanar Temple for more than a decade now. The temple famous for the Aadi Amavasai festival is situated on the banks of the perennial river, Tamiraparani. Every year during the festival, the temple attracts more than one lakh devotees from all parts of the state. We were monitoring the impacts on wildlife occupancy, water quality, socio-economic aspects among many other things. For this blog, I’ll stick to the roadkill part of the monitoring for now. With more than a lakh people visiting the temple, an equal number of vehicles also ply the roads inside the reserve over a short span of five days. This puts enormous pressure on the animals that inhabit the areas surrounding the temple. Our work was to record the number of road mortalities along four road sections in two phases i.e. pre-festival and during the festival.

Every morning each team would survey the road sections for the roadkills. In each survey, it was heartbreaking to see many little yet valuable lives being lost on roads because of careless driving. Most of the roadkills are of reptiles. And the reason is obvious. As reptiles are ectotherms it depends upon external sources to regulate their body temperature. The roads which radiate heat is an ideal place for the reptiles to bask. Some also lose their lives while crossing the roads which traverse through their habitats. I did not come across any roadkill of mammals during the survey. But during previous years of monitoring roadkills of mammals like Common Palm Civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus), Indian Gerbil (Tatera indica) have been recorded.

 

Bronzeback Tree Snake (Dendrelaphis tristis)

The roadkills mostly include snakes, turtles, lizards and many other invertebrates. As this period is also the breeding season for many animals, increased roadkills in a short period of time ultimately threaten their survival. The species I encountered the most as roadkill were Indian Black Turtle (Melanochelys trijuga) mostly juveniles and some colubrid snakes like Bronzeback Tree Snake (Dendrelaphis tristis) and Russell’s Kukri (Oligodon taeniolatus). One roadkill worth mentioning was of the Indian Rock Python (Python molurus) which is a Schedule I species protected under the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972.

Indian Rock Python (Python molurus)

The findings of ATREE over a decade long monitoring reveals that the road mortalities includes more than 50 species of animals and the roadkills are ten to fifteen times more during festival days when compared to pre-festival period. As the density of vehicles entering the forest increases during the festival, the roadkill also increases drastically. More than half of the mortalities were of the nocturnal animals since there was no night traffic ban during the festival days. This finding among many other things later convinced the district administration and the forest department to take some positive measures to regulate the vehicular traffic during the festival. Now the private vehicles are no longer allowed to enter the reserve during the festival days. They are stopped two days before the festival and also not allowed for two days after the festival. Night traffic ban is in force during the festival days. Only public transportations like buses at timely intervals are allowed during the festival days. As a result, the roadkills have significantly reduced if not completely.

Keeled Grass Skink (Eutropis carinata) with its eggs

This is one success story from KMTR. But still every day countless lives are being lost on roads all over the country. Roadkills are inevitable but they can be minimised. And the solutions are very simple. Wildlife corridors are suggested as solutions for the roadkills inside the protected areas. These are like bridges for the animals to cross linear infrastructures passing through their habitats. Also if we follow the so-called defensive driving techniques such as driving slowly & carefully, keeping our eyes on the road, we can effectively reduce the roadkills to a certain extent.