Right Of Way

Every animal killed on our highways and by-ways is tragic. But surely creatures don’t end up as roadkill in protected areas? Sadly, they do.

- Janine Stephen

South Africans have a love affair with the 750 000-odd kilometers of tarmac and dirt roads that criss-cross our country. We are car nuts and eager road trippers. But the roads that spell freedom to us can be bad news for wildlife, even in national parks. Two leopards and an elephant were killed on the R572 outside Mapungubwe. Kruger lost a cheetah inside the park in April 2016, and speeding vehicles have killed warthog and impala.

No-one knows how many creatures are killed on South African roads. In the United States, a horrifying million large vertebrates are estimated to be lost daily. Roadkill is the most visible result of vehicle-animal interaction. But road ecology, the study of the impact of roads on the natural systems they bisect and how to mitigate that impact through working with planners, has exposed a far greater impact. Habitats are lost or fragmented, bird song changes due to noise disturbances, even breeding patterns are disrupted as road surfaces can play havoc with the pheromones that some reptiles need to sniffout for breeding success.

Speeding can be an issue for smaller parks, too, such as the West Coast National Park. Pierre Nel, senior section ranger, says that people knock over everything from snakes to eland, Cape francolin, mongooses, ostrich and small game. A major culprit is the smooth tar road from the Langebaan entrance which commuters use as a shortcut rather than take the nearby R27. Speeds of up to 100 km/h have been recorded. Such drivers have little interest in the birds or game. There are also high volumes of cars during flower season, up to 2 000 a day.

Pierre says that when he first arrived at the park in 1996, the new through-road had not yet been fully tarred. “Once it was, a lot of small game was killed, like duiker and steenbok. That seems to have stopped. Either they’ve been wiped out on the road verges, or their territories have moved further away.”