Golan Heights residents working to reduce animal road deaths

Asphalt roads on the edge of wilderness areas have become one of the greatest dangers to wild animals who make their homes in those regions.

A group of Golan Heights residents wants to do something about it. They have met with the staff of the Golan Heights and Hermonim Field Study Center to try to reduce wildlife vehicular fatalities.

According to Gil Chomka, the director of the study center run by the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI) says not only people are hurt in road accidents. "Every year thousands of animals are hit - mammals, reptiles and even birds." According to Chomka, the roads in Israel cut across animal habitats. Animals cross over looking for food, water and for mates, and that can be fatal for many of them. Every month the Golan and Hermonim field study center receives dozens of reports of road kills. Among them are foxes, jackals, wolves, wild boars and gazelles. Chomka adds, "Usually the collision ends not only with the death of the animal but with damage to the car and injury to the driver. Wild boars, for example, have a huge body mass that can be equivalent to a car running into a concrete wall."

Area residents and study center personnel noticed that over the past year the number of dead animals on the roads had increased. And so they have started a project to map the sites of the most frequent accidents. The study center field educators published an email address where people could report road kills. Each report will get a mark on the map. Emails were also sent to area residents asking them to report on dead animals they spot.

"The appeal is mainly to people who live in the area, who travel regularly on the roads," Chonka said.

The SPNI will pass on the data to the Transport Ministry and the supervisor of public safety in the Golan Heights Regional Council, and a plan of action will be formulated. Among the ideas proposed, the SPNI wants to put up large and colorful warning signs at dangerous points, speed bumps, passageways beneath the road, and special markers on travel maps that would indicate points that are dangerous for people and animals.

Chonka, who says the data will be "impossible to ignore," and result in public pressure for change, adds that they already know two of the Golan's animal danger-zones or "red roads" - 808, the waterfalls-Moshav Yonatan road, and 918, Gadot-Gonen.