Sierra Club- Watch for Wildlife (webinar)
Event Recording
Event Summary
by Tamal Mackenzie, Saint Mary’s University Service Learning Student
The program Watch for wildlife was created with the intention to mitigate the potential chance of vehicular collision with animals in nature as this is a growing problem. Watch for wildlife wants to teach people the best ways to reduce the chances of colliding with a species and the proper way to respond in an accident which may lead to the animal surviving the crash.
The project has been active in Nova Scotia since 2016 and due to its success it now includes New Brunswick.. Through the use of apps such as Inaturalist,community members are able to post plant and wildlife observations within their geographical area to build a local wildlife index. These observations can be studied as a dataset to understand where a species may be found and provide a look into where certain species are facing the most collisions.
Due to a few years of increasing awareness to the general public, Watch for Wildlife was able to come up with a few solutions that would decrease the amount of vehicular collisions. A proposed solution was the creation of a wildlife crossing. A wildlife crossing would be a path integrated above or below a street that would provide animals with passage that lead to resources without the chance of vehicular collisions occurring. The program also calls for us to be prepared as we can reduce or even prevent the accident from just being aware of the road and taking the time to survey the area ahead for animals. The watch for wildlife program shows the public that we have more control on these collisions as long as you are trying to be aware of the wildlife in the area.
The future of Watch for Wildlife is bright and the goals that the organization wants to accomplish involves more community engagement. Encouraging people to share stories of accidents they have been in as the data collected can be used to create awareness of the problem. The program also wants the government to commit to reducing these kinds of vehicular collisions as the data from the program can be useful in the construction of future roads or even maintenance of the environment. A lot of collisions with wildlife occur and there is no exact number of wildlife deaths due to vehicular collision mortality but, we can see the effects that this is having on the species.
In conclusion, the Sierra Club-Watch for Wildlife program is a great resource to help increase your safety on the road as they minimize wildlife collisions.