• Proceedings of the National Institute of Ecology of the Republic of Korea
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.274-278
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• 2021

Road structures play an important role in collisions involving vehicles and wildlife. Our study aimed to determine the effect of various types of road structures on the risk associated with roadkill. We surveyed 50 previously identified roadkill hotspots, ranked from one to five according to roadkill density. We collected nine types of road structure data on each hotspot road section. Structures with similar characteristics were grouped together, resulting in five categories, namely, median barrier, high edge barrier, low edge barrier, speed, and visibility. We examined the existence of each road structure category at each hotspot rank. The cumulative link model showed that the absence of bottom blocked median barrier increased the roadkill hotspot rank. Our study concluded that a visual obstacle in the middle of roads by the median barrier decreases wildlife road crossing attempts and roadkill risk. We suggest that future roadkill mitigation plans should be established considering these characteristics.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.1-7
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• 2007

As more highways are constructed and more cars are running on them, toll of roadkill steadily increases. To make the problem more serious, roadkill include endangered species. This study compared two sets of roadkill data of selected Korean highways. One set of data were produced, as a routine job of everyday, by the Korea Highway Corporation (KHC), and the other by a team of wildlife researchers for a limited period of time for research purposes. The aims of the comparison were to identify if the species of the animal, location of the roadkill, time, and other information were kept reasonably, especially in the forms provided to the patrols of KHC, to be used for research purposes later. Major findings and suggestions are; 1) KHC patrols are not wildlife professionals, which is understandable, and could not identify some animal species killed on the highways. As they also are not aware of the importance of the accurate data for the wildlife protection, education to promote their awareness is needed. 2) Current form used by the patrols is far from enough to produce good data for research. A new and detailed form needs to be designed and provided to the patrols so that they can keep all the necessary data on roadkills for monitoring and research purposes. If these issues are addressed, the data collected daily by KHC will become good inputs for roadkill researches in Korea.

• Ecology and Resilient Infrastructure
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.162-168
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• 2016

The objective of this study was to estimate the roadkill occurrence of water deer (Hydropotes inermis), a representative roadkill species in South Korea. For this estimation, I analyzed national road statistics and roadkill statistics, and then reviewed case studies that estimated the number of deer roadkill in other countries to apply the estimating methods to our case. As a result, the estimated number of water deer vehicle collision was at least 60,000 per year in South Korea.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.34 no.5 s.118
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• pp.52-58
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• 2006

Wildlife roadkill is a serious problem for road planners and biologists concerned with traffic safety, species conservation, and animal welfare. The objective of this paper was to analyze the effect of land use on the frequency of mammal roadkills. This study took part in three steps. First, data for 1,279 road kills of nine species were collected by survey over 26 months on 107km of roads near the Mt. Jirisan area. Second, the type of land use near the roadkill points was analyzed, and the area of each land use within loom of the road was calculated using GIS. Finally, the question of whether the land use affects the Sequency of mammal roadkills was analyzed by determining the density of roadkill occurrences for each land-use type. The results of the study were as follows. First, the roadkill density of all species was highest near grasslands, especially natural grasslands. Second, when comparing forests and rice fields, roadkill densities of the Eurasian red squirrel, Siberian chipmunk and Korean hare were higher near the forests, while the densities of the raccoon dog, water deer and leopard cat were higher near rice fields. The results of this study could be an essential information source for mitigating the roadkill problem in Korea.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.74-83
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• 2024

This study aims to estimate roadkill occurrences and investigate influential factors in Chungcheongnam-do, contributing to the establishment of roadkill prevention measures. By comprehensively considering weather, road, and environmental information, machine learning was utilized to estimate roadkill incidents and analyze the importance of each variable, deriving primary influencing factors. The Gradient Boosting Machine (GBM) exhibited the best performance, achieving an accuracy of 92.0%, a recall of 84.6%, an F1-score of 89.2%, and an AUC of 0.907. The key factors affecting roadkill included average local atmospheric pressure (hPa), average ground temperature (℃), month, average dew point temperature (℃), presence of median barriers, and average wind speed (m/s). These findings are anticipated to contribute to roadkill prevention strategies and enhance traffic safety, playing a crucial role in maintaining a balance between ecosystems and road development.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.21-31
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• 2004

Construction of highway would influence wildlife habitat being fragmented and deteriorated. It is inevitable to observe the death of animals that are killed by vehicles. Nonetheless the cause and status of animal roadkill have not been studied, and this study first attempted to analyze the roadkill in major highway in Korea. We collected 860 individuals of dead animals in Joongang Highway during 1996-2003. Among them Korean hare(Lepus sinensis) was totaled in 165 individuals(19.2%) with the highest figure; Korean racoon dog(Nyctereutes procyonoides) was 146(17.0%); Korean squirrel(Sciurus vulgaris) 56(6.5%); Korean roe deer(Capreolus capreolus) 26(3.0%). Domestic animals was totaled in 232 individuals(27.0%); domestic dog(Canis familiairis) 25, and domestic cat(Catus felis) 207. This study also categorized habitat as mountain-mountain, mountain-plain, mountain-river, plain-plain, plain-river, river-river in each side of the road. Habitat of mountain-plain was the heightest with 296(38.9%) individuals followed by mountain-mountain with 263(34.6%). This indicates that wild animals associated with mountain habitat was most influenced by the construction of roads. This study implied that we should mitigate the roadkill by designing artificial construction such as eco-bridge, fences along the sideway, and boxes under the highway, underdrain structure, etc. The monitoring and cause of habitat fragmentation with GIS approach should be followed to reduce the roadkill.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.580-591
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• 2019

This study analyzed roadkill hotspots in Yeongju, Mungyeong-si Andong-si and Cheongsong-gun to compare the method of searching the area of the spatial cluster for selecting the roadkill hotspots. The local spatial autocorrelation index Getis-Ord Gi* statistics were calculated by different units of analysis, drawing hotspot areas of 9% from 300 m and 14% from 1 km on the basis of the total road area. The rating of Z-score in the 1km hotspot area showed the highest Z-score in the 28th National Road section on the border between Yecheon-gun and Yeongj-si. The kernel density method performed general kernel density estimation and network kernel density estimation analysis, both of which made it easier to visualize roadkill hotspots than district unit analysis, but there were limitations that it was difficult to determine statistically significant priority. As a result, local hotspot areas were found to be different according to the cluster analysis method, and areas that are in common need of reduction measures were found to be the hotspot of 28th National Road through Yeongju-si and Yecheon-gun. It is deemed that the results of this study can be used as basic data when identifying roadkill hotspots and establishing measures to reduce roadkill.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartD
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• v.15D no.6
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• pp.873-878
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• 2008

The wild animal warning post and the echo-bridge on the road are widely used as a popular roadkill prevention system. The warning post shows a one way warning message to drivers and is not effective to prevent animals from being killed. In the case of echo-bridge, the construction cost is very high such that we could not build sufficient number of the echo bridges on the road. Therefore, we have proposed a new roadkill prevention system which is designed and implemented to warn both of drivers and animals. This system is composed with sensor, speaker, web server, and navigation system and the software is designed to use web services on the web under the. Net environment.

• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.99-109
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• 2008

This study conducted 6 times of roadkill investigations in national road 121 km (about 10%) of Chungcheongnam-do. As a result of the investigation, 94 individuals were found dead on the road. The roadkill statuses by construction of road were 44 times (1.13 times/km) at two traffic lanes, 1 time (1.90 times/km) at three lanes, and 23 times (0.35 times/km) at four traffic lanes. Also, land use on the frequency of roadkill were 26 times between mountain region and cultivated land, 25 times between cultivated land and cultivated land, and 20 times between mountain region and mountain region. So, particular attention is needed at the construction and facilities of road to reduce roadkill.

• Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.51 no.3
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• pp.234-244
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• 2018

The roadkill that animals die after bumping by vehicles on the roads is acting as a factor to decrease the size of various animal populations. It has also been known to be the biggest artificial causations of Vertebrata deaths not only in urban areas but also protected areas such as national parks. Nevertheless, in the national park areas which are major protected national areas for conservation of national biodiversity and ecological diversity, snake roadkills occur frequently. Up to date, related studies are rare. Therefore, in this study, we described snake roadkill patterns on the roads in six national parks between 2006 and 2015. We identified total 736 snake roadkills compromising 10 different species. Five species, Rhabdophis lateralis, Elaphe dione, Gloydius ussuriensis, Lycodon rufozonatus, Gloydius brevicaudus occupied more than 91.7% of total roadkill cases. Active forager snakes were killed by roadkills more than ambush foragers, and the snake roadkill frequency was the highest in September, a migration period and in August when the young individuals dispersed at between 100 and 799 m altitude areas. Roads where roadkills were frequent lie between forest and hydrosphere or between forest and crop field road sides. Our results could be used to identify the trend of snake roadkills on the roads in national parks, and to establish effective roadkill mitigation measures and policies.