Echidna Roadkill Hotspot Modelling
Wildlife Queensland’s EchidnaWatch program has been gathering information on the distribution and abundance of echidnas around Queensland – and we wanted to help.
We know that echidnas don’t cope well with traffic and sadly become roadkill. But we need to know the real extent of the damage that cars cause to echidna numbers, and identify and predict hotspots in order to strategically implement mitigation measures.
Given that the EchuidnaWatch data largely contained observations close to population centres, roads, tracks, and highways, we, therefore, attempted to use the data to help develop a GIS-based roadkill hotspot model to identify suitable locations for wildlife movement and mitigation measures. We also linked those “hotspots” to specific regions in order to identify those administrative regions that would most benefit from such measures, and whom to approach for funding their installation.
Click on the link below to read the final report and view some of the figures associated with it. We have outlined a method for identifying potential road crossing (and possibly roadkill) hotspots from observational data that could be applied to wildlife generally, and we would welcome the opportunity to apply our method to other sets of data.
Identification of potential echidna roadkill hotspots in south-east Queensland
If you think that BioGeo could help with your project, contact us at info@biogeo.com.au