Utah Wildlife Road Mortality Hotspots:

1
Utah Wildlife Road Mortality Hotspots
An analysis of contributing environmental and
demographic factors, economic impacts and
implications for mitigation and management
Christine A. Kassar John Bissonette
INTRODUCTION Road corridors cover approximately
1 of the United States however, the ecological
impacts of these roads are not restricted to this
area alone (forma Alexander 1998). This is
because roads have both a physical and virtual
footprint, causing direct and indirect effects
respectively. This study will focus on the
direct effects of roads on deer in Utah by
identifying wildlife mortality hotspots and the
environmental characteristics of these areas to
determine if there is a correlation between
factors and number of crashes.

• DEER-VEHICLE CRASH STATISTICS
• Deer-Vehicle Crashes-1.5 million per year
• Deer killed-726,000 per year
• Total vehicle damage due to deer-1 billion per
  year
• Estimated human injury-29,000 per year
• Estimated human fatality-211 per year

• OBJECTIVES
• To determine high wildlife road kill areas by
  road segment throughout Utah.
• To identify environmental characteristics of
  areas with high wildlife-vehicle accident rates
  and to evaluate how location of these hotspots
  correlates with such factors
• To investigate the impact of temporal factors,
  including seasonality and time of day on
  road-kill patterns at these hotspots.
• To asses monetary costs associated with
  accidents, including vehicle damage, human injury
  and death and wildlife mortality.
• To synthesize this information and evaluate
  implications for mitigation and management.

• METHODS
• Utah Department of Transportation database
  analysis GIS mapping
• Utah spatial database analysis, field
  observations and correlation
• Cost estimate development
• Inferences and analysis of implications for
  management mitigation

.

• EXPECTED RESULTS
• We expect to find correlations between number of
  accidents and environmental factors including
  traffic characteristics, road alignment and
  vegetative and topographic features.
• We expect that there will be correlations between
  time of year and time of day with number of
  accidents.
• We expect that our economic evaluation will show
  that DVS have a significant economic impact on
  people.