Background & Rational
Both road and railway collisions involving wildlife are common occurrences, each linked to analogous outcomes. Road collisions involving wildlife can often entail human and/or wildlife injury or death as well as vehicle damage (Borde-de-água et al., 2017). Meanwhile, wildlife-train collisions differ because there is a higher potential for spilled goods causing ecological damage (and they do not entail human injury or death) (Borde-de-água et al., 2017). Furthermore, these collisions incur economic costs due to potential damages to both property and infrastructure (Backs, J. A., Nychka, J. A., & St. Clair, C. C. 2020).
While road collisions have been studied/mitigated extensively, railway-train collisions have received less attention because the characteristics of railways limit the feasibility of using mitigation efforts designed for roads (Backs, J. A., Nychka, J. A., & St. Clair, C. C. 2020). Collision mitigation on roadsides is usually quite costly and involves the building of infrastructure such as fencing and/or wildlife crossings to segregate animals from people, or signage to warn people in areas of elevated wildlife activity (Backs, J. A., Nychka, J. A., & St. Clair, C. C. 2020). Though these features are useful on roads, trains are not capable of stopping as quickly and the surface area (hundreds of thousands of kilometers) and terrain types (mountainsides, slopes, cliff edges etc.) that span an average railway make building fencing and wildlife crossings economically infeasible and in some cases dangerous.
While road collisions have been studied/mitigated extensively, railway-train collisions have received less attention because the characteristics of railways limit the feasibility of using mitigation efforts designed for roads (Backs, J. A., Nychka, J. A., & St. Clair, C. C. 2020). Collision mitigation on roadsides is usually quite costly and involves the building of infrastructure such as fencing and/or wildlife crossings to segregate animals from people, or signage to warn people in areas of elevated wildlife activity (Backs, J. A., Nychka, J. A., & St. Clair, C. C. 2020). Though these features are useful on roads, trains are not capable of stopping as quickly and the surface area (hundreds of thousands of kilometers) and terrain types (mountainsides, slopes, cliff edges etc.) that span an average railway make building fencing and wildlife crossings economically infeasible and in some cases dangerous.
Research Objectives
The objective of this study is to determine which wildlife deterrent is most effective in reducing wildlife presence near roads and railways. Therefore, the focus of this study is to improve animal awareness of approaching vehicles (both train and automotive) in order to reduce collision probability. We focused on four types of warning signals: auditory (horns/bells), visual (flashing lights), a combination of both, as well as a control (no deterrent enabled). The purpose of the control is to account for annual fluctuations in wildlife activity, while the before measurements are intended to serve as baseline conditions. These baseline conditions were used to measure the difference in response variables (i.e. potential annual population fluctuations) once deterrents were applied.
Expected Results
We predicted that the combination of both deterrents would be the most effective in management in terms of warning wildlife of approaching vehicles to reduce wildlife mortality rates. We expected the visual and audio deterrents to be moderately effective with similar results. This research may provide insight into wildlife/vehicle collision mitigation methods that are both effective and more economically feasible than traditional methods (fencing/animal crossings).