Progress!! If Wildlife Escapes Burning Forests, It Can Now Be Flattened On Brazil's Highways

[hatrack]

The last time Schwartz’s tracking monitor registered his location, he was standing at the edge of the “highway of death”. A massive male giant anteater, he was roaming his habitat in the Brazilian Cerrado – a vast tropical savanna that neighbours the world’s largest tropical wetland, the Pantanal – when he disappeared next to the federal highway officially known as the BR-262. No more GPS datapoints, collected every 20 minutes, were recorded.

But biologists and veterinarians from the Institute for the Conservation of Wild Animals’ (ICAS) Anteaters and Highways Project, who had placed the collar on him, were sure of what happened. The driver who hit Schwartz probably didn’t see him until it was too late. It was night-time, and Schwartz’s dark colouring and eyes that wouldn’t have reflected the headlights of oncoming vehicles would have made it almost impossible to avoid him. The impact on his body was most likely so great that the tracking collar broke, and researchers think he dragged himself away from the road to die. The team searched for him, but he was never found.

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In 2020, the Pantanal experienced its worst drought in 47 years – with the damage made worse by the fires that overtook the wetland – leaving its main source of water, the Paraguay River, at levels so low that many ships meant to carry mining cargo had to remain docked. “The low level of the river has forced mining companies to start sending shipments by road,” says Gustavo Figueirôa, a biologist studying wildlife-vehicle collisions with the nonprofit organisation SOS Pantanal, “so the flux of trucks on the highway has increased”. The fires also added to the number of wildlife deaths by pushing more wildlife to cross the road, and by causing poor visibility leading to more collisions.

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Vehicle collisions are not directly causing local extinctions,” he says. “But they’re reducing the population growth rate by half, meaning the animals have less capacity to recuperate from other threats, such as fire, poisoning by agrochemicals, dog attacks and habitat loss.” That was why the ICAS researchers chose to study the giant anteater to better understand how highways affect wildlife populations as a whole, particularly in Mato Grosso do Sul, which has some of the most dangerous paved roads in the country. Desbiez says: “In Mato Grosso do Sul, all highways are highways of death.” While the BR-262 gets the most attention, others can be just as lethal, Desbiez says. Another federally-run highway, the BR-267, was equally as deadly for giant anteaters monitored in Desbiez’s project. There is also ‘tapir highway’, the state-run MS-040, so-called because it has the highest number of collisions with lowland tapirs, another species vulnerable to extinction and with a declining population.

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/26/highway-of-death-animals-pay-ultimate-price-on-brazils-most-dangerous-road-for-wildlife-aoe

[Mickju]

1. Tragic

Sometimes I despair.