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Whatsapp A Pademelon in its final resting place on a roadside verge

Per kilometre, more animals die on Tasmanian roads than anywhere else in the world. But unlike when abuses have been exposed in the live export trade, there has been no national outrage, writes Ann Jones. Why not?

Warning: This story contains images that some readers may find disturbing.

The dark stain on the road, the crushed bones, remnants of fur and feathers. Stuck to the road by a glue made of muscle and intestine.

It's impossible to tell what species this once was. There is no taxonomical guidebook for this.

On average, 32 animals are killed every hour on Tasmanian roads.

As you fly past on the midland highway in Tasmania, it's just another bit of grey, matted fur stuck to the highway in leathery defiance of those who might try to avert their gaze.

In the tourist brochures at the airport, Tasmania is displayed as an idyllic, biodiverse, nature haven. It's true—much of the island is covered in green, and you'll see species there that are found nowhere else on earth.

You'll probably see a lot of them stuck to the road: on average, 32 animals are killed every hour on Tasmanian roads.

'More animals die per kilometre on Tasmanian Roads than anywhere else in the world,' says Don Knowler, author of Riding the Devil's Highway.

'The scale of roadkill in Tasmania is just colossal,' he says, adding that almost 300,000 animals are killed a year, with some groups putting the figure as high as half a million.

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Whatsapp The speed restrictions surrounding roadkill hotspots are generally voluntary.

'When an animal is hit by a vehicle, not all of them die,' says Dr Alistair Hobday, a CSIRO marine scientist who also researches roadkill in Tasmania.

'They may suffer broken limbs, they may suffer shock or concussions in the same way people do. And then you've got an animal going off into the bush to die later or carry that injury for a very long time.'

The carcasses litter the roads, the side of roads, verges and surrounds all around the state, but Hobday's research indicates that there are hotspots.

And I think I found one. I drove around a rising curve on a road and there they were. Three of them. Possums.

As fluffy as a pet cat, as tiny as a scruffy terrier, smashed to the ground next to each other. Were they hit in one go? Did one get hit, and then another as it came to investigate its den mate?

Did they come out of that old tree over there and not make it more than 20 metres last night?

The gloss of life had leaked from the hair, and it is now dull with the brittleness of death.

One of the bodies is twisted, its face towards the oncoming traffic, its mouth open and its tiny, infant-like hands, curled uselessly around air. It is dead.

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Whatsapp Bearing the wounds of impact and a mouthful of dirt, what did this pademelon experience in its last moments of life?

Alexander Hobday's research estimates that 108,543 individual brushtail possums are killed on Tasmania's roads every year, a figure which is in part a macabre testament to the fertility of the Apple Isle.

'What I have seen through my research is that animals like wombats and devils are typically removed from the roads very quickly after they've been hit, and that indicates that society cares about those and wants to move them off the road,' says Hobday.

'Animals like brushtail possums and rabbits and wallabies are often left on the roads for weeks at a time. That suggests that the public does not care very much about those types of animals.'

Ironically, not moving those possums increases the risk to species deemed more precious.

It's called secondary roadkill, and it means meat eaters like wedge tailed eagles, quolls and endangered Tasmanian devils quickly come to associate roads with a ready supply of squashed or paralysed wallabies, pademelons and rabbits.

The carnivores get busy chowing down, their heads buried in a rib cages and they don't hear the cars coming. Until it's too late.

This is particularly alarming given that some populations of devils have already declined 95 per cent, due mainly to the Devil Facial Tumour disease.

'Across most of its range there's only, say, 10 to 15 per cent of the devil left, then roadkill becomes your key threatening process,' says Save the Tasmanian Devil program manager Dr David Pemberton.

'I have no doubt that in a lot of areas, roadkill is killing more devils than facial tumour disease. We've actually measured this in a couple of areas—and roadkill is up there as a killer.

'You might have 20 devils left in the Wukalina National Park, of those 20 there are probably three or four mums that can breed and survive disease, therefore the population persists.

'If roadkill kills two of those mums, you've then halved the productivity: that's when it's a real issue,' says Pemberton.

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Whatsapp Tawny Frogmouths injured by car strike are unable to be rehabilitated into the wild, and will live out their days at Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary

Six devils immunised against tumours that had been released into Tasmanian National Parks immunised devils were recently killed by road strikes.

The Save the Devil Program workers had chosen specific release areas with the risk of roadkill in mind, releasing the devils in an area as far away from roads as practical.

Translocating animals is a very risky undertaking, with varied success rates across different species. This had never been attempted before.

'If there's any goodness to come out of their deaths, it's that it's highlighted roadkill as a major issue, especially for threatened species in Tasmania,' says Pemberton.

Devils often get hit because it's dark when they're out and about. They're squat creatures, low to the ground and dark in colouring. They don't reflect headlights, especially on low beam, until you're too close to stop safely.

As seen in this report from Catalyst, Alistair Hobday worked this all out by putting stuffed animal specimens from a museum along a road. Volunteer drivers were then asked to note when they first saw the specimens.

Take the pademelon. It's a dark furry, squat little animal with a basketball-shaped bum. With your lights on low beam, you won't see it until you're 30 metres away from it.

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Whatsapp As a general rule, Tasmanian animals are more furry and darker in colour than on the mainland, like this echidna. This means they are harder to see in headlights.

'Your reaction time when you're driving at a 100 kilometres an hour is such that you probably need 60 to 80 metres to stop the vehicle if you were to avoid a collision. If you were travelling at 50 to 60 kilometres an hour, your stopping distance is somewhere between 30 to 40 metres,' says Hobday.

'It makes a difference because at night you have the ability to see animals at different distances ahead of you and if you're travelling at very fast speeds at night, you simply won't have time to detect an animal and react before you hit it.'

Information on roadkill hotspots, maps and a warning system that can be loaded into a GPS have been made available at the Roadkill Tasmania website.

Hobday is lobbying for the system to be included in all cars hired in Tasmania.

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