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Methodologies for Surveying Herpetofauna Mortality on Rural Highways
Author(s) -
LANGEN TOM A.,
MACHNIAK ANGELA,
CROWE ERIN K.,
MANGAN CHARLES,
MARKER DANIEL F.,
LIDDLE NEAL,
RODEN BRIAN
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
the journal of wildlife management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.94
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1937-2817
pISSN - 0022-541X
DOI - 10.2193/2006-385
Subject(s) - geography , amphibian , ecology , spatial ecology , physical geography , environmental science , biology
Road mortality can contribute to local and regional declines in amphibian and reptile populations. Thus, there is a need to accurately and efficiently identify hotspots of road‐mortality for hazard assessment and mitigation. In 2002, we conducted walking and driving surveys throughout an extensive rural highway network in northern New York, USA, to evaluate survey methods and to quantify spatial and temporal patterns of herpetofauna road‐mortality. In 2004, we repeated the surveys at a subset of locations to quantify interannual repeatability. Reptile and amphibian species had different peak periods of road‐mortality because they differed in the causes of movements that resulted in crossings. Spatial locations of herpetofauna road‐mortality were concentrated at a limited number of hotspots. Hotspots overlapped across species and were located at consistent locations across years. Results of walking and driving surveys were highly repeatable among survey teams, but driving surveys underestimated the density of road‐mortality because many animals were missed. Detection failure was higher in some taxa (e.g., frogs) than others (e.g., turtles). Our results indicate that it is possible to design a valid, efficient methodology for locating hotspots of reptile and amphibian road‐mortality along a road network and, thus, pinpoint priority sites for mitigation.