AILSA CHANG, HOST:
This summer, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is asking drivers to whip out their cellphones and take pictures of roadkill. It might seem like an odd request, but crowdsourced volunteer science like this is increasingly helping to protect wildlife from cars. Kristian Foden-Vencil of Oregon Public Broadcasting went for a drive.
(SOUNDBITE OF VEHICLE DOOR SHUTTING)
KRISTIAN FODEN-VENCIL, BYLINE: Lee Cain is a teacher at Astoria High School, and on his three-mile commute, he keeps an eye out for dead animals.
LEE CAIN: Well, there we go. Right there. There's it, right there.
FODEN-VENCIL: I see some cans.
CAIN: Yeah. No, there's...
(LAUGHTER)
CAIN: Yeah. It wasn't the can. I'm going to pull over here and get out of the traffic here.
FODEN-VENCIL: Putting on a reflective vest, he crosses the busy road.
CAIN: That's definitely mountain beaver. I'll get a shot of it before we flip it over.
FODEN-VENCIL: And you're touching him. You're not worried about germs or anything like that? He's pretty fresh.
CAIN: Well, I've got some disinfectant right in the truck. I'll be using that in a second.
FODEN-VENCIL: Cain pulls out a camera and takes a picture.
(SOUNDBITE OF VEHICLE DOOR SHUTTING)
CAIN: Depends on the group of organisms you're with, but...
FODEN-VENCIL: Back in the car, with the hazards blinking, Cain opens an app called iNaturalist on his phone. It's a volunteer scientist's scientist website. He navigates to a page that's been created by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Oregon Zoo, specially for people to upload pictures of roadkill. Cain says he enjoys the idea of advancing scientific understanding of nature using his cellphone.
CAIN: Just the sheer volume of photos coming in allow questions to be answered about distribution and populations and timing.
FODEN-VENCIL: Rachel Wheat is a wildlife connectivity coordinator with Oregon's wildlife department, and says that's why they set up the project.
RACHEL WHEAT: The state wants to get a better idea about where different individual animals, different species are getting struck and killed by cars.
FODEN-VENCIL: She hopes volunteer scientists can help the state identify roadkill hotspots so they can reduce the carnage by building wildlife crossings.
WHEAT: Oregon has fewer wildlife crossing structures than most other western states.
FODEN-VENCIL: Washington has at least 40 dedicated wildlife crossings. California has even more. Wheat says Oregon has five. But they're not cheap. An overpass big enough to have trees, rocks and downed logs on it, so big animals like elk will cross without getting spooked, can be tens of millions of dollars or more, so it's important to build them in the right place. Wheat says Oregon's first dedicated wildlife crossing proved highly effective.
WHEAT: Since that structure was built, wildlife vehicle collisions were reduced by 80%.
FODEN-VENCIL: Oregon isn't alone in its effort to track roadkill this way. There have also been projects in Europe, Utah and California. Fraser Shilling is the director of the Road Ecology Center at the University of California, Davis. He's been asking people to upload roadkill data for 15 years now, and says it's been used to make some interesting findings around the state.
FRASER SHILLING: We're killing about 10% of our deer population every year with traffic.
FODEN-VENCIL: Shilling says the data is being used for everything from planning wildlife crossings to deciding which roads to fence, and it's not just deer.
SHILLING: For certain mammals in California, half of the information we have about where the wildlife are occurring comes from roadkill data.
FODEN-VENCIL: But a few warnings before you decide to document roadkill. Stopping to take a picture on a highway can be dangerous, so be aware of traffic. And once you start looking for roadkill, you'll see it everywhere.
For NPR News, I'm Kristian Foden-Vencil in Astoria, Ore.
(SOUNDBITE OF LUPE FIASCO SONG, "I'M BEAMIN'") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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