Question for CJs

[Jenny]

Hi,

A recent mention of roadkills by Kerry has prompted me to ask if it is permissable to mention a couple of things:

1) Badgers - do we still report (as we always used to have to do) the siting of badger roadkills to the local authority - to do with TB testing and (of lesser importance in some people's eyes) road safety?

2) The Deer Commission and various other bodies have been recording deer/motorist accident statistics. Is it permissable to post the website on the general forum? As regards this, when I had my accident with a deer some 3.5 years ago, our local police sergeant was very specific I should report it (I did) but I don't know if this survey is common knowledge. Funding seems to have ceased in Scotland (how nice - seeing a deer caused a major accident on the outskirts of my town a few weeks back with long term issues for one of the victims) but not in England and Wales.

I don't intend this to be anything other than informatory but please check out using any decent search engine about the survey.

Thanks, Jenny

[Lisa]

Hi Jenny

Thanks for the questions.

1) Badgers

As far as we are aware, there is no requirement to report Badger kills to the local authority, although local badger groups or wildlife trusts may have their own voluntary monitoring schemes, go to http://www.badger.org.uk/groupfinder.html or http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/index.php?section=localtrusts to check.

Our wildlife advisor believes that random tests carried out by the Shropshire Badger Group found that a number of "Road Kills" in the county had been shot (which is illegal) and then dumped on the road, so there are conservation and/or welfare benefits in monitoring road casualties if a local scheme exists.

2) Monitoring Accident Statistics

As a rule, Deer and other less common road casualties such as otters, polecats, and mink should be reported to your Local Biological Records Centre (LBRC or LRC), you can find the contact details via the National Federation for Biological Recording web page at http://www.nbn-nfbr.org.uk/nfbr.php or your County Mammal Recorder via the Mammal Society at http://www.abdn.ac.uk/mammal/recording.shtml.

I hope that this information is useful.

[Jenny]

Lisa

Thanks for the badger information.

Regarding the studies on deer collisions, people may find the following weblink helpful:

www.deercollisions.co.uk (http://www.deercollisions.co.uk/)

It has some interesting reading on it.

Jenny