Compreender para conservar: um estudo sobre os atropelamentos de fauna na Floresta Nacional de Carajás, Pará, Brasil

Abstract

The roads represent an important role in our society in many aspects, but they can create serious impacts to wildlife, especially when related to vertebrate road kills. According our review, road ecology studies have improved vastly in the last 24 years in several countries. Mammals are the most studied taxon with the mitigation strategies as the principal objective. Carajás Nacional Forest (CNF) is a protected area of the Brazilian Amazon, located in the State of Para with two roads (a total of 67 Km length) crossing the tropical rainforest. We collected 3,629 animal carcasses in the CNF roads between the years 2008 and 2011. Reptiles and mammals were the most affected groups, representing more than 70% of all road-kill events. Amphibians and birds represented 16% and 13%, respectively. The road-kill rate was 0.026 individuals/km/day, with an average of 3.52 events/day. We identified mortality events in 11 species of amphibians, 63 reptiles, 66 birds and 66 mammals, very expressive numbers when compared to the CNF species richness. We found a significant relation between the traffic of personal vehicles, the speed limit, the road structures (curves and water flow channels) and the proximity of the vegetation and the number of vertebrates run over. The rainfall influenced only the reptilian and amphibian events. The distribution of road kills had a significant spatial aggregation, therefore we identified the roadkill hotspots that varied significantly over the years, only in the case of birds and amphibians. We propose mitigation measures such as use of speed bumps, decrease of speed limits, edge vegetation management, environmental education measures and implementation of monitoring