Road kills

 Different animals get attracted to roads for different reasons. This attraction can cause their death. Roads are useful for humans and some animals that use roads to aid for their survival, which turns to be death. Snakes go to roads to lie around because of the surface’s heat, some birds use roadside gravel to aid their digestion of seeds and many others use roads to travel.  According The Humane Society of the US and the Urban Wildlife Research Centre, 1 million animals are killed everyday on highways in the United States. This is a huge contribution to the loss of biodiversity. Deer death increased by 500% after highway I-75 was completed. Vehicles killed 26,180 deer and 90 bears in 1985 in Pennsylvania. And it is no surprise that road kills are the leading known cause of death for all large mammals except White-tailed Deer. We often see animals killed on roads but we don’t see the large picture and the hidden effects on humans and animals. Highway speeds are increasing as well as the number of cars on roads, this means more animals killed on roads. Biodiversity is a huge issue that we contribute to it without noticing. As mentioned above, the number of animals killed on roads is not small and is only increasing. This is a problem that is contributing to the disaster loss of biodiversity that we are walking toward by ourselves and caused by our actions. In my opinion, more rules should be set to avoid more animals’ killings on roads. Maybe we don’t see the effect now, but will see it in the future.

By: Majid Yaqoub