There are more than a million wildlife vehicle collisions in the United States annually with significant personal and economic costs, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. Every year, they result in about 200 deaths and 26,000 injuries to drivers and passengers and cost more than $8 billion.

Kathleen Carroll, assistant professor of applied quantitative ecology in the University of Rhode Island’s Department of Natural Resources Science, is working on a solution to make roads safer for both wildlife and humans. It will utilize the help of citizen scientists.

Rhode Islanders can now report roadkill that they hit or observe using a QR-code generated survey or online. The public’s participation will ultimately inform research efforts to mitigate risks for both drivers and animals. Usage of the survey is anonymous. With permission, it will pull the respondent’s GPS location but no personal data.

“If we identify key hot spots for roadkill, we can advise the Rhode Island Department of Transportation on ways to increase successful wildlife crossings,” Carroll said.

The pervasive problem of roadkill illuminates larger concerns about wildlife connectivity, the ability for animals to move freely from place to place. In western states, known migration pathways have informed efforts to facilitate safe movement through large underpasses and overpasses.

“We have eight of the ten most densely populated states in the Northeast,” said Carroll, “and the abundance of roadways and cities creates certain concerns. Here we have animals moving around, but we don’t have massive ungulate or mammal migrations, so we don’t have giant wildlife bridges or other things that work out West. There have been a lot of discussions about what is important when we start thinking about connectivity in New England specifically.”

Data from the survey will complement research conducted by Carroll’s graduate students that uses camera trap data to record animals’ usage of culverts.

“We know that animals are willing to use culverts, as opposed to crossing on the road, because they don’t want to be somewhere they’re going to die,” Carroll said. “So what is it about some culverts that makes them willing to use it?”

Identifying what is happening spatially at culvert sites will provides crucial information on predicting animal behavior, she noted.

The data from the Rhode Kill Survey will be paired with traditional data collection methods: graduate students in Carroll’s Quest Lab will complete surveys that utilize standardized effort, driving the same amount of distance from randomly assigned starting points and then pulling off the road to pick up roadkill for assessment of species, age, sex, and other identifications.

The Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management and the GPS app Waze currently collect roadkill data, but it’s very disparate. Carroll and the team are interested in establishing a data-sharing agreement to ensure all collected data can be used more effectively.

While the survey is in its early days, there is already growing interest in the work, including from the New York Department of Transportation.

The only required question on the Rhode Kill Survey is whether the animal was a deer. Additional optional questions include the ability to upload a photo and to participate in a follow-up driving survey. The latter is particularly useful to researchers, according to Carroll, because it provides information about the level of effort and driving habits of respondents.

For questions, more information, or to receive a bumper sticker with a QR code to the survey, contact Carroll.