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Patterns and Composition of Road-Killed Wildlife in Northwest Argentina

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Abstract

Roads have important effects on wildlife, such as natural habitat fragmentation and degradation and direct killing of fauna, which leads to reductions in wildlife population size. We focused on a principal road in Northwest Argentina to test for the effect of seasonality and landscape features on the composition of road-killed wildlife. We conducted regularly scheduled road trips during the dry and wet seasons. We recorded the presence or absence of a vegetation curtain or hedge along the road. We measured land use by remote sensing in a 500 m buffer along the road. We compared the abundance of animals killed between seasons (dry and wet) for different taxonomic groups (mammals, birds and reptiles) and for different origins (domestic and native). We built linear mixed models to test the effect of landscape features on the abundance of killed animals. Two hundred and ninety-three individuals were killed, belonging to 35 species; 75.8 % were native and 24.2 % domestic species. The majority of animals killed were mid-sized mammals. More animals were killed during the dry season. The most important factors to explain the wildlife road-killing were the season and the proportion of agricultural landscape. The composition of the killed animals changed with the season. The proportion of agricultural landscape incremented the number of killed birds and mammals during both seasons, without affecting reptiles. The ratio of wild to domestic animals killed was dependent on the season. This study sets a precedent as the first in road ecology in Northwest Argentina and should be taken into account for road planning and regulation.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Greenpeace-Argentina and Grupo Yaguareté for logistical support. We are thankful to S. de Bustos, J. Gato and D. Vazquez for data collection and to J. Osorio and M. Zietsman for English revision. We thank three anonymous reviewers and the editor.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centro de Estudios Territoriales Ambientales y Sociales (CETAS), Universidad Nacional de Jujuy, San Salvador de Jujuy, Argentina

    Griet An Erica Cuyckens

  2. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Griet An Erica Cuyckens

  3. Departamento de Métodos Cuantitativos y Sistemas de Información, Facultad de Agronomía, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Lucía Sol Mochi, María Vallejos & Fernando Biganzoli

  4. Delegación Regional del Noroeste Argentino, Adnimistración de Parques Nacionales, Salta, Argentina

    Pablo Gastón Perovic

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  1. Griet An Erica Cuyckens
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Correspondence to Griet An Erica Cuyckens.

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Cuyckens, G., Mochi, L., Vallejos, M. et al. Patterns and Composition of Road-Killed Wildlife in Northwest Argentina. Environmental Management 58, 810–820 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-016-0755-6

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