Should we eat roadkill?

How many animals are killed on the road?

Studies suggest that in the US, the number of animals killed on roads is up to hundreds of millions each year, with the number of birds alone reaching 340 million. Scaled globally, this figure easily goes to the billions. 

According to a UK study, the expansion of road infrastructure and the increase in cars have worsened the impact of roads on wildlife. There were 4.2 million vehicles on the UK’s roads in 1951, compared with 40.8 million by March 2023. Over the same period, the overall length of the road network increased from 184,000 to 245,100 miles. Traffic volume is expected to grow a further 51% by 2050.

Which animals do cars mainly kill?

Vehicles in the UK most often hit hedgehogs, badgers, foxes and owls. In the UK and Europe, death by car has put local species of hedgehogs, badgers and hares at risk of extinction.

In the US, it’s squirrels, rats, cats, opossums and raccoons. However, roadkill is often not reported, as drivers are more likely to report incidents involving larger animals due to the risk of injury or damage to their vehicle or for insurance claims.

Wildlife conservation experts at Nottingham Trent University set out to understand the extent of the threat roads and vehicles pose to wildlife. They studied 69 species from across the globe. They found that roadkill doesn’t discriminate - it was the most common cause of death in almost a third of all 150 animal populations studied and affects both common and critically endangered species. 

The victims ranged from hedgehogs, squirrels, and otters to macaque monkeys, wolves, and even sea lions and hippos. Roadkill was the leading cause of death in 28 per cent of all studied animal populations, surpassing disease, hunting, and predation. It was the second leading cause of death for 30 per cent of the animal populations studied and third for 32 per cent.

Some animal populations bore a devastating burden, where up to 80 per cent of all recorded mortality resulted from vehicle collisions.

While high roadkill rates did not harm population growth for some species, even minimal road mortality spelt disaster for others. 

For the Iberian lynx in Spain – classed as “endangered” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) – 59 per cent and 80 per cent of deaths in two populations were due to vehicle collisions.

Meanwhile, 38 per cent of African wild dogs classified as “endangered” and 48 per cent of San Clemente island fox populations classified as “near-threatened” were killed by vehicles on roads.

The researchers at Nottingham Trent University discovered that out of 50 Tasmanian devils released into the wild from captive breeding programs, 19 were killed on the roads, putting the endangered species at further risk.

What are the solutions to roadkill?

Reporting roadkill

Reporting and cataloguing roadkill can help scientists and engineers identify causes and solutions. Drivers in Belgium, which has Europe’s densest road network, can use speech recognition on ObsMapp to report and log instances of roadkill. In Israel, a project uses the navigation app Waze’s feature to map roadkill occurrences, whereby drivers can tap an icon with a porcupine’s face and a tongue sticking out to report roadkill.

Animal crossings

Mitigation measures such as “ecoducts,” underpasses and fencing are helpful and can be found worldwide. Canada’s Banff National Park famously installed 24 wildlife crossings - 22 overpasses and two underpasses - in 1978. At least ten species were estimated to have crossed the road around 84,000 times by the 2000s.

In the Netherlands, woodland highways are attempting to save the dwindling population of European badgers; a network of overpasses, underpasses, and ecoduct tunnels comprised of over 6,000 crossings have aided not only the badger but other species, such as boar and deer who started using the badger paths.

The Netherlands’s Natuurbrug Zanderij Crailoo is the largest wildlife crossing in the world. It stretches 2,600 feet over a river, roads, rail lines, and golf course.

In Kenya, underpasses protect commuters and elephants from collisions, with recorded instances of elephant families that were once separated and reunited again via the tunnel.

Raising awareness

Community projects help to highlight the magnitude of the issue of animals killed on the roads. One project, started by Bram Koese, a biologist from Leiden University’s Naturalis Biodiversity Center, frustrated by the large number of otter and waterfowl deaths from speeding traffic and the lack of response from local authorities, set out to prompt drivers to be more careful. With the help of volunteers, Koese installed 642 crosses on a road in South Amsterdam to pinpoint the locations where vehicles had hit and killed animals in recent years. The hundreds of shrines erected for the dead stoats, weasels, swallows, owls, frogs and geese were a visual reminder of the seriousness of the issue.

Unfortunately, some local community members were not impressed by the white crosses. “Two days after we erected them, they had run down every one of the crosses,” Koese told the Scientific American.

Eating roadkill

The growing number of animal deaths on the road each year corresponds to the ever-increasing global population and expanding road network. Though a less comfortable concept, eating roadkill is not a new idea and has old roots in many communities around the world. 

In West Virginia in the US, a thousand-strong town has hosted the Annual Roadkill Cooking Festival for 37 years, featuring dishes from various animals that met their fate on local roads, from black bears to elk - and even reptiles.

Food waste is frowned upon in resource-scarce regions, and eating roadkill is celebrated. Communities all over the US, such as in Alaska, Idaho and California, are normalising bringing roadkill home to clean, cook and eat. California became the 29th US state to legalise eating roadkill in 2022.

People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) advocates for roadkill as a sustainable and ethical solution to the skyrocketing demand for meat production and consumption. 

“If people must eat animal carcasses, roadkill is a superior option to the neatly shrink-wrapped plastic packages of meat in the supermarket,” reads the PETA website. 

“Eating roadkill is healthier for the consumer than meat laden with antibiotics, hormones, and growth stimulants, as most meat is today. It is also more humane in that animals killed on the road were not castrated, dehorned, or debeaked without anaesthesia, did not suffer the trauma and misery of transportation in a crowded truck in all weather extremes [...] Perhaps the animals never knew what hit them.”

Image by Ivana Cajina.