How Many Animals and Birds Killed on UK Roads

 Being very polite with National Highways (UK) at the moment re. road-kill stats but here is some very sobering and depressing stats for you:

*How many cats are killed on UK roads?

"In 'normal' times, PetPlan figures record 230,000 cats are hit by cars every year, that's 630 every single day in the UK.

*How many dogs are hit by cars each year UK?

1.2 million dogs are hit by cars every year | Pet Playgrounds DIY Dog Fence Kits.

*How many hedgehogs are killed by cars?

We think around 50,000 – 100,000 hedgehogs are killed annually on roads, out of a population of about 600,000, but the figures are very uncertain. If it's about a quarter of the total each year, then road casualties are likely to impact on the population and reducing that number could help conserve hedgehogs.

*How many birds are killed by cars UK?

The results were depressing. A minimum of 30 million birds are killed on Britain's roads every year.

Compare this to the fictionalised "domestic cats kill millions each year" (made up numbers of cats +made up numbers of kills =a very badly made up figure).

Add to this the number of cats, dogs and wild life killed through the use of rodenticides

• 4.6 million dog owners and 2.5 million cat owners believe their pet fell ill after consuming something poisonous, with one in nine pets being poisoned last year
• On average vets treat 323 dogs and 56 cats for poisoning every day across the UK
• One in six (17 per cent) poisoned dog and cat owners believe their pet was poisoned deliberately
• Claims data reveals Labradors, Cocker Spaniels and Poodle crossbreeds to be the three dog breeds most commonly poisoned over the last two years

According to Josh Davies writing for the Natural History Museum in 2020 https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2020/september/uk-has-led-the-world-in-destroying-the-natural-environment.html:

Centuries of farming, building and industry have made the UK one of the most nature-depleted countries in Europe.

Extensive agricultural lands and road networks, in combination with other factors, have reduced the wildlife in the UK to a point hardly seen elsewhere.

While the UK has made some gains, natural landscapes have been so heavily degraded over decades and centuries that we are simply not doing enough to turn back the tide. 

Biodiversity is the name we give to the variety of all the plants, animals, bacteria and fungi with which we share the planet. It is the range of species found in every habitat on Earth, including in the woodlands, on the seashores and on the tops of mountains.

As humans change the environment, from building roads to digging up fields, we chip away at this diversity of life, reducing the number of species that are found in any one place.

This is causing species around the planet to decline at a concerning speed.

A new analysis looking into how much biodiversity is left in different countries around the world has shown that the UK has some of the lowest amounts of biodiversity remaining.

Before the Industrial Revolution, forests covered much more of the UK than they do now. Large areas of wilderness were home to animals and plants which are now a rare sight, or gone completely. Red squirrels, beavers, wolves and bears were once common in the British Isles.

The advent of mass farming, factories, roads, trainlines and urban sprawl has been a death knell for wild places, and it was accelerated by the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century. And things are getting worse, not better.

More than 40 million birds have disappeared from the UK's skies since 1970, according to the RSPB.                    <end>

According to the Mammal Society:

In Britain annual road casualties are estimated to account for 100,000 foxes, 100,000 hedgehogs, 50,000 badgers and 30,000-50,000 deer.

The next moron who says "cats are slaughtering our wildlife" feel free to let the air out of his car tyres. Of course, no one counts mice or shrews which are small and most people hardly notice them.

The fox figure is interesting -as is that for badgers. The Fox Deaths Project has shown that there is babesia, septicemia, pneumonia and even "accidental" secondary rodenticide poisoning that is killing foxes or leading to their deaths and that excludes cubs who die when a vixen or brace (pair) of foxes are killed. Those numbers go uncounted as do "natural" cub deaths. No one has really looked into badger deaths because Health and Safety dictate over bovine TB -though we can post mortem a badger if cause of death looks suspicious (ONLY in the area the project covers sadly -City and County of Bristol).

Mapping locations of reported dead badgers as well as badger setts may help us in 2023 if any sow is killed and shows signs of having had cubs we can search the area for orphaned cubs.

We also know that wild boar and wallabies are killed on main roads and from eye-witness accounts (here I am referring to credible witnesses not people who report an old tyre as a "dead black panther") we know that large cats -panthers and pumas as well as jungle cats and other species (photographs and carcasses on record)- as well as wolverine are also killed and seen on the side of roads.

What I would like to see happen is that people who see these dead exotics -cats in particular- try to photograph them or report their observations. Unfortunately motorways are not the safest places to stop and run around the hard shoulder to photograph a dead animal. We know the deaths are occurring and it will give us a new angle to animal road deaths in the UK.