(Credit: Purdue University photo/Andrew DeWoody)
Frogs just can’t catch a break. First there was pollution, then amphibian chytrid fungus, then global warming. And now: road kill.
A Purdue University inventory of road kill during a 17-month period on a particular Indiana road tallies the body count:
- 79 opossums, the most common mammal;
- 36 chimney swifts, most common bird;
- 35 common garter snakes, most common reptile;
- 43 raccoons;
- 4 white-tailed deer;
- 9,300 amphibians
This is according to a new, Science Daily news release that says 95 percent of the road kill was frogs and toads and salamanders. Here’s an excerpt:
The dead included 142 road-killed eastern tiger salamanders, a finding DeWoody said was troubling.
“The absolute number might not look that large, but most of these individuals were mature, up to 10 years old,” DeWoody said. “Many of them were gravid, or females bearing eggs on an annual trip to breeding grounds where they often lay 500 to 1,000 eggs. This could make a potentially big difference for the population.”
April 17, 2008 at 5:32 am
That is so sad. You would think that by now an amphibian tunnel/bio-highway could be built under the affected roads. A highway is being built through a wetland next door to my city, and it is a small consolation that they did build a wildlife tunnel underneath it for deer, bear, amphibians and anything else that happens to find the tunnel. This would not have been done if conservationists didn’t make a stink about it. It will remain to be seen how effective this oversized tunnel is.