Wildlife and traffic
Approximately up to 10.000 wildlife animals (such as red deer, fallow deer, roe deer and wild boar) are killed annually in road traffic accidents in The Netherlands. And this number increases drastically every year. Sometimes the animals are killed instantly, but not always. A heavily wounded animal can still flee to seek safety, only to die later in a most horrible way.
The reason that the number of animal collisions has risen is the increase in the number of roads and traffic.
The project has two objectives:
- To design an innovative warning system along the Dutch roads, which will reduce both human as well as animal victims. Twenty students from the Delft University of Technology are designing new types of wildlife warning systems.
- To raise awareness among Dutch road-users about the relationship between nature and traffic and the risks of collisions with wildlife.
We want to raise more awareness for the position of nature in the Netherlands and the natural element in Dutch infrastructure. The growing number of roads and road users are getting to be more and more of a restriction to nature. Wild animals have a natural urge to migrate and this will result in more collisions between traffic and animals which are often fatal for the animals. Also major material damage is done to vehicles, nature (trees, ditches) and public ownership (crash barriers, lamp posts).
Project Update Wild Life Traffic:
The students of the DUT have developed 18 innovative concepts in the field of detection of game around the highways and means ways to keep the game off the roads at certain times. Discussions with a senior adviser of the Dutch Department of Transportation indicates that there are many promising concepts amongst the designs. Most important is that the concepts are being tested on effectiveness, sustainable accuracy and reliability of the detection of fauna movements in the strips along roads. It is important that we highlight several aspects, which all should be addressed in a possible solution: biology, engineering, design and civil engineering.
Currently we are discussing possibilities with TNO for the start of a trial phase. We will keep you informed of further developments.
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