dan abernathy - contributing to the chaos

Road Kill

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I'm not doing this Road Kill Project to be gross, or fill someone's morbid fantasies and these images are very gruesome. What I am hoping to accomplish is some small way is a type of awareness. Maybe by seeing these graphic images, people will slow down and be more alert when driving through our wildlife corridors. I was told by the Sheriffs Department recently that over 40 head of deer are being hit by vehicles a week around Pinedale. That is an unbelievable number of dead deer not to mention the costly damage to the murder weapons. According to High Country News, who run some stats on the subject, the average minimum cost to a vehicle is $2000.00 after it has smacked our wildlife. With that figure the weekly cost for carnage is $80,000.00, or $320,000.00 a month.

Roadkill Statistics
Compiled by the staff of High Country News.
February 7, 2005

4 million - Miles of roads in the United States.

226 million - Number of vehicles registered in the United States.

23 trillion - Vehicle miles traveled in the United States in 2002

6.3 million - Number of automobile accidents annually in the US

253,000 - Number of animal-vehicle accidents annually

50 - Estimated percentage of vehicle-large animal collisions that go unreported.

90 - Percentage of animal-vehicle collisions that involve deer

$2,000 Average minimum cost for repairing a vehicle after a collision with a deer

1 million - Number of vertebrates run over each day in the United States (a rate of one every 11.5 seconds).

200 - Number of human deaths annually resulting from vehicle-wildlife collisions.

6 - Number of bears killed last year by vehicles in Yellowstone National Park.

1,559 - Number of animals killed on Yellowstone National Park roads from 1989-2003. Figure includes 556 elk, 192 bison, 135 coyotes, 112 moose, 24 antelope and 3 bobcats.

2,349 - Number of large animals killed on New Mexico roads in 2001. Figure includes 30 black bears, 160 elk and 600 deer.

51,000 - Number of vertebrates killed in and around Saguaro National Park by automobiles each year. Figure includes 1,400 birds, 6,500 mammals, 26,000 reptiles and 17,000 amphibians.