Leurs Elleke, Kirkpatrick James B
Department of Geography, Planning, and Social Science, University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS 7001, Australia.
Animals (Basel). 2024 Aug 20;14(16):2413. doi: 10.3390/ani14162413.
The surge in wildlife-vehicle collision research has not yet translated into a substantial decrease in animal fatalities. In line with the prevailing view, we suspect that drivers' behaviour may be the most crucial element. We address a research gap in drivers' attitudes towards and behaviour in response to wildlife-vehicle collisions from a tourist perspective. We designed a questionnaire to examine tourists' attitudes and behaviour in relation to wildlife-vehicle collisions while driving in Tasmania. We found that the respondents' sociodemographic attributes had minimal effect on their practical responses to roadkill. Tourists consider wildlife-vehicle collisions a serious problem for both biodiversity loss and animal welfare reasons, and their willingness to change their behaviour was high. However, many respondents did not stop to check for surviving pouch young. This inaction resulted either from overlooking the importance of pouch checking or a lack of knowledge on what action needed to be taken. There may also be a lack of understanding that roadkill left on the road leads to secondary roadkill incidents. Even though tourist behaviour does not automatically represent residents' behaviour, these findings will help to improve and tailor educational approaches to rectify the driver awareness/behaviour gap for both tourists and residents.
野生动物与车辆碰撞研究的激增尚未转化为动物死亡数量的大幅下降。与普遍观点一致，我们怀疑驾驶员的行为可能是最关键的因素。我们从游客的角度填补了驾驶员对野生动物与车辆碰撞的态度及应对行为方面的研究空白。我们设计了一份问卷，以调查游客在塔斯马尼亚驾车时对野生动物与车辆碰撞的态度和行为。我们发现，受访者的社会人口学属性对他们对道路死亡动物的实际反应影响甚微。出于生物多样性丧失和动物福利的原因，游客认为野生动物与车辆碰撞是一个严重问题，而且他们改变行为的意愿很高。然而，许多受访者没有停下来检查有袋幼崽是否存活。这种不作为要么是因为忽视了检查有袋幼崽的重要性，要么是因为不知道需要采取什么行动。也可能存在对留在路上的道路死亡动物会导致二次道路死亡事件缺乏理解的情况。尽管游客行为并不自动代表居民行为，但这些发现将有助于改进和调整教育方法，以弥合游客和居民在驾驶员意识/行为方面的差距。
