Title:

Whiskers on the Windshield

Road networks impede wildlife connectivity, reduce survival, and fragment wildlife habitat. These changes elevate wildlife-vehicle collision (WVC) risk and increase danger to humans and wildlife. Identifying WVC hotspots and monitoring wildlife activity at such locations can inform planning to reduce collision risk and increase habitat connectivity. Here, we sought to: 1) identify WVC hotspots in New Hampshire using spatio-temporal analyses, and 2) analyze the relationships between habitat connectivity and WVC hotspots and whether or not species-specific wildlife corridors can serve as indicators as these hotspots. Using statewide collision records from 2002-2021, we identified hotspots by calculating the total number of collisions and the collision density for each road segment during 2015-2019. From these hotspots, we analyzed species-specific connectivity corridors for four different species (black bear, bobcat, river otter, porcupine) derived from the NH Fish & Game Connectivity Model to determine if stronger habitat connectivity has an influence on the amount of WVCs in a given area. Our results show that as habitat connectivity increases for black bear, bobcat and porcupine corridors, where there is an existing hotspot, the number of collisions within that area are higher. The otter corridor did not show a positive correlation with the hotspots; therefore, it can be assumed that modelled otter corridors do not serve as indicators of WVC hotspots. Future steps with this research will involve placing game cameras at these hotspot areas to obtain true occupancy and occurrence data. Combining a hotspot analysis with on-the-ground-field monitoring will provide strong evidence of local collision risk and should support effective mitigation efforts.

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