ShareThisWhat's that gooey lump in the road ahead?
A University of California, Davis researcher, conducting a road kill census in California, says his first year analysis shows it's most likely the remains of a raccoon that was hit by a car.
Raccoons account for 12 percent of animals flattened on state roads, according to volunteer road-kill spotters, and submitted to the California Road Kill Observation System.
Davis researcher Fraser Shilling, is using the online reporting system to chronicle animal road deaths in hopes of helping transportation planners design more wildlife-friendly roads.
"Thousands of animals are killed on California's roads every day, including endangered species," Shilling said in a UC, Davis press statement. "This is a threat to the state's natural legacy and, for some species, their very existence."
His site has received reports of 6,700 road kills in its first year, involving 205 animal species. Of those, 824 were raccoons. Striped skunks and California Ground Squirrels followed on the most-hit list, trailed by opossum and deer.
Shilling's website for reporting road kill is at: www.wildlifecrossing.net/California
(E-mail reporter Tony Bizjak at tbizjak(at)sacbee.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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Counting raccoons
I wonder how may thousands of dollars was wasted on this study that has no practical application. No wonder California is broke a better study would be to find out how many politicians are corrupt, inept or unethical. That would be too easy I guess.