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What is roadkill? What is TaiRON? Roadkill refers to animals killed by cars or motorcycles on the roads. These accidents do not only cause the death of wildlife, but also may cause damage to the vehicles. Related to traffic safety, wildlife conservation, and other issues. TaiRON is a citizen science project that investigates and documents roadkill incidents and deaths of wildlife in Taiwan.
The full name of TaiRON is the Taiwan Roadkill Observation Network, a virtual group created on Facebook in August 2011 (https://www.facebook.com/groups/roadkilled/). TaiRon was established by Assistant Researcher Lin De-En of the Endemic Species Research Institute (ESRI). In 2008, ESRI trained volunteers to assist in the survey of animal distributions in Taiwan. Lin De-En was responsible for the training related to reptiles. In order to facilitate communication with volunteers, he established the ESRI Reptile Volunteer Group on Facebook. At the time, he posted a picture of a snake killed on the road which led to the volunteers uploading their own pictures of roadkill and the number of members grew. This showed Lin De-En the public’s attention towards roadkill and the opportunity to establish TaiRON.
Over the past decade since the establishment of TaiRON on Facebook in 2011, as the number of posts increased a website was created. At first, the group only recorded reptiles killed on the road, but gradually expanded to the deaths of all land-based vertebrates by roadkill, including mammals, birds, amphibians, and reptiles. The group later also included invertebrates such as land crabs. The reporting method is very simple. Members of the public only need to take a photo with their phones and upload the information to the website. If the dead animal is a bird, reptile, or non-feline or canine mammal, the body of the animal can be stored in a double lock Ziplock bag with the collection information clearly stated before reporting the roadkill. The body can then be packaged in a sturdy cardboard box or polystyrene box and sent through “frozen shipping” and “pay on delivery” methods to ESRI TaiRON. The body will be stored for further study and collection to maximize the value of the deceased life. According to the statistics released by TaiRON, there have been nearly 6,200 members of the public that have reported over 130,000 cases of roadkill. Additionally, nearly 10,000 animal bodies have been sent to TaiRON. Lin De-En pointed out that this data can be used for three main purposes, including improving animal roadkill and disease monitoring and pesticide and environmental heavy metals toxicity monitoring. For example, during the rabies epidemic in 2013, the bodies collected by TaiRON were used with great effect, allowing TaiRON to increase in popularity.
In July 2013, rabies returned to Taiwan and some members of the public were even bitten by Melogale moschata and hospitalized. Society was on edge and presumed that the epidemic was started by border control issues. TaiRON looked through its records accumulated over two years and found that there were several unusual Melogale moschata deaths. TaiRON had several Melogale moschata bodies from around Taiwan in their freezers, which were sent to the Council of Agriculture National Institute for Animal Health for further testing. After viral genetic sequencing, researchers found that rabies had been in Taiwan for more than 210 years. The virus had evolved into a local strain and had never disappeared. The TaiRON records were perfect for epidemiologists to track the epidemic and quickly sort out the facts.
Besides rabies, TaiRON has also worked with the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine and the Institute of Wildlife Conservation (NPUST). In 2015, they began the “bird poisoning in farmlands survey.” They used suspected pesticide poisoned birds from farmlands and specimen collections to find the correlation between crops and pesticides endangering wildlife. The results of the survey were used to stipulate pesticide usage regulations in Taiwan and to decrease the occurrence of environment hazards. Through this process, the animals did not die in vain. Instead, they helped to create an environment friendly to humans and the ecology.
Returning to their original purpose of recording roadkill, TaiRON started promoting the “grand systematic survey” in 2018. They used scientific survey methods to estimate the total number of roadkill in Taiwan every year and pinpoint roadkill hotspots. TaiRON selected 420 sample areas in Taiwan. They invited volunteers to pick a day in January, April, July, and October to conduct four surveys every year and calculate the number of bodies found on roads within three kilometers of the sample area. Over the three years of conducting the grand systematic survey, estimates are that the number of vertebrates killed on the roads every year in Taiwan is between 15 million to 20 million which is a staggering number.
In order to improve the situation, TaiRON identified 116 roads in Taiwan where roadkill frequently occurs. Besides providing the data to the authorities in charge of road management, TaiRON also worked with navigation software companies and apps to include the top 100 roadkill hotspots in the navigation systems, in order to improve road conditions and reduce the occurrence of roadkill. If you use Garmin navigation, Local King navigation, or the Omnie CUE traffic information app on your phone, when you drive on a road at a time where animals frequently appear, the system will warn the driver and ask the driver to slow down. In the future, TaiRON will focus on improving the roadkill situation, so that roads in Taiwan will become friendly to pedestrians, drivers, and animals. Let us follow the director of TaiRON, Assistant Researcher Lin De-En of ESRI, to understand TaiRON experiences through the past decade.
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