Mow Me Kangaroo Down

Not far north of the Minilya roadhouse, glossy black dots strut through the silver mirage around a dark mass on the road. With a Formula 1 driver’s judgment of closing velocity, at the last second they wheel into the sky, crows playing chicken with the traffic. The tableau of roadkill they are enjoying looks like a multi-species suicide pact. There’s the standard eviscerated kangaroo, but also an emu less than a meter away, head tucked under its wing as if sheltering from the wind that fluffs its feathers. Beside it is a foul-smelling black-and-white smear that might have been a penguin, for all the amateur pathologist can make out.

These are three victims of the slaughter of wildlife on Australia’s roads. Quantifying the annual carnage is impossible, but “it’s going to run into millions,” says Daniel Ramp, an environmental scientist at the University of New South Wales. He’s been studying a 30-km stretch of the Snowy Mountains Highway for six years, and each year it has claimed around 650 kangaroos. “And that’s not counting wombats, possums or anything else,” he says.

Surprisingly, there is no systematic collection of data on these encounters: no official figures on animal deaths, crashes caused, or associated costs. And unlike in the U.S. and Canada, where such research abounds, there are few preventive measures in place. Con-sequently, Australians hit animals at five or six times the rate of their North American cousins.

How to reduce the toll? With difficulty, says Ramp. “Most of the options are things people aren’t willing to do.” Redesigning roads to incorporate overpasses, underpasses or fencing would cost billions of dollars; deterrent devices fitted to vehicles simply don’t work; experiments with spreading predator scents along the verges have been unsuccessful. The simplest solution would be for drivers in the bush—especially those at the wheels of big trucks, which are the most murderous—to change their attitude: stay alert, slow down on single-lane highways, try not to drive when animal activity peaks at dawn and dusk. But Ramp’s not holding his breath for the revolution: “I’m afraid people don’t seem to care about wildlife too much,” he says. “Some even deliberately target kangaroos. It’s very disappointing.”