The first Tasmanian traffic calming devices to reduce wildlife road kills in the State were completed by the Department of Transport in 1996 on a section of the road to Cradle Mountain. As a result, wildlife in this area is living longer, now that their greatest predator, the car, is forced to move at a slower speed through their territory. With increasing visitors to the Cradle Mountain area, the road infrastructure to the Cradle Mountain Lodge at the National Park boundary was upgraded in the late 1980s and early 1990s. At that time, a zoologist from the University of Tasmania, Menna Jones, was undertaking studies of Tasmania's carnivores in the Cradle valley. By chance, her studies documented the dramatic fall in the local Tasmanian devil population in this area and the local extinction of the resident eastern quoll population following the upgrading and sealing of the road. Subsequently, the Department of Transport, based on information provided by Jones on the ecological and behavioural characteristics of individual species and road mortality patterns, introduced a range of measures to reduce the number of wildlife road kills in the valley. The purpose of this paper is to: (a) Demonstrate the unforeseen impact road improvements can have on wildlife; (b) Outlines measures adopted by the Tasmanian Department of Transport at Cradle Mountain to reduce wildlife road kills; (c) Discuss the effectiveness of those measures; (d) Discuss, amongst other things, the use of traffic calming devices to assist in protecting our native fauna. (A)
Abstract