School of Earth, Environmental, and Marine Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
5-26-2025
Abstract
Mortalities of wildlife caused by collisions with vehicles along roads are increasing in prevalence, threatening the existence of various species and populations. The COVID-19 pandemic-related lockdown provided an opportunity to gain a better understanding of how wildlife vehicle mortality occurrences change in response to anthropogenic variables and how varying survey methods influence obtaining mortality data. In this study, data were collected in three observation periods: pre-lockdown (PreL), during lockdown (DL), and post-lockdown (PostL) in south Texas. There were 194 wildlife mortalities recorded during weeks 4–27 of 2020. Results of this study showed that road mortality survey counts did not change PreL, during COVID-19 pandemic-related lockdown (i.e., DL), and PostL. This study also investigated number of mortality survey observers, a key element in road mortality surveys. We observed that two observers detected more wildlife road mortalities than one observer. Information on these novel findings would be useful in the wildlife road mortality survey methods in the future.
Recommended Citation
Beer, Bradley E., Kevin Ryer, Md Saydur Rahman, John H. Young Jr, and Richard J. Kline. "Wildlife road mortalities during COVID-19 pandemic-related lockdown in south Texas: a comparative survey." Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 13 (2025): 1493875. https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2025.1493875
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Publication Title
Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution
DOI
10.3389/fevo.2025.1493875
Comments
© 2025 Beer, Ryer, Rahman, Young and Kline. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.