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Jul 25, 2023

Seeing more roadkill on the highway? Here's why

Drivers in Missouri have a better chance of encountering an animal in the road

Drivers in Missouri have a better chance of encountering an animal in the road than most other places in the U.S.

Missouri drivers have 1-in-76 odds of hitting an animal in the upcoming year, far higher than the national average of 1-in-115, and November is the most likely month for it to happen, according to a report from insurer State Farm.

Missouri ranks No. 16 in the country for animal collisions, and the insurance company has listed it as a high-risk state.

Of the 5,691 recorded animal collisions in Missouri last year, almost two-thirds were deer, with 420 causing human injury and three leading to deaths.

In 2021, a deer was hit every two hours and 18 minutes in the state, according to data from the Missouri State Highway Patrol.

Hanna Blackmore, a junior at MU, has experienced this kind of collision firsthand.

The sun had just set June 20 after a calm, hot day in Louisiana, Missouri. Blackmore and a friend had just returned from St. Louis and decided to stop at an ice cream shop.

On the way home, she was slowing down from about 45 mph to turn onto the gravel road that leads to her house when suddenly she felt a bump.

"The only reason I knew I hit a deer is because it was rolling out in front of me on the road," Blackmore said.

The deer was dead, and she was faced with the "mortifying" task of clearing it from the road.

In a haze, she dragged the deer by its hind legs to the side of the road, next to another deer that must have collided with a vehicle just days before. That "should have been an indication," she said.

Although her car hardly budged on impact, the damage was significant. The hood, the side panels, the grille, the headlights, the bumper — essentially the entire front end of the car — all had to be replaced.

Technicians at an auto body shop assessed the damage and told her that if she had been going just 5 mph faster, her engine would likely have been destroyed and the car totaled.

"The impact from a deer is very much like a collision with another car," said John Lee, customer service representative at Joe Machens East Collision Center.

Since deer are top-heavy, most collisions avoid damaging the underside of the car, but Lee said the body will often land on the hood, or the deer's shoulders will smack the fender and doors and bounce back.

Stories like Blackmore's are even more common this time of year. Animal collisions, especially those involving deer, are at their peak during the fall mating season.

Deer are significantly more active during these months, and since they are such large animals, they can cover far more ground than other potential victims of roadkill.

"When they get active, you definitely notice it," said Adam Doerhoff, Boone County conservation agent with the Missouri Department of Conservation.

Fall weather is also cooler and food more available, both powerful incentives for deer to start traveling. When it's too hot or too cold, they prefer to lie around, "much like humans do," Doerhoff said.

So, a buck on the move in search of a receptive doe will expand its home range, said Jason Isabel, service program supervisor with the Conservation Department.

"They’re used to crossing roadways fairly frequently if one bisects their home range," Isabel said. "So occasionally, they’ll be in the vicinity and wanting to cross the road at the same point in time a vehicle's running down the road."

As a result of these seasonal changes, deer are crossing roadways more often than they do at any other time of the year. And, because of recent shifts in state policy, the ones that become roadkill are more obvious than ever.

In 2012 and 2013, the Conservation Department purchased incinerators for the Missouri Department of Transportation to use to dispose of roadkill. MoDOT would load the dead animals into trucks and take them to those incinerators.

But after using them for a few years, it proved to be both a costly and ineffective practice, said Natalie Roark, state maintenance director at MoDOT.

This was paired with the ongoing spread of chronic wasting disease, a neurological condition that affects members of the deer family. The illness typically spreads fairly slowly, with one deer passing it to another. But human transportation of deer carcasses will cause it to spread more rapidly, Doerhoff said.

"The less you can move carcasses, the better," he added.

So, in 2019, MoDOT reached out to the Conservation Department to discuss the best and most practical strategy for removing roadkill from Missouri roads without spreading the disease.

This collaborative effort led to the method that MoDOT uses now: Employees drag carcasses to the side of the road, away from traffic, leaving them in the nearby landscape to naturally decay.

If any roadkill poses a safety hazard, they will deal with it as soon as possible, including on weekends. They do not encourage residents to remove roadkill themselves.

There are still some incinerators throughout Missouri, but the roadside disposal method is currently MoDOT's preferred way of ridding the roads of safety hazards across the state.

"If I could drag a deer 5 yards, 10 yards, just down the embankment of I-70 where it’ll break down, and there's no risk of transporting a potentially CWD-positive deer, that makes a whole lot more sense than loading it up," Doerhoff said.

MoDOT's priority is keeping the roads safe, so if any animal is a hazard to traffic, state employees will pull it to the side — not just deer, but other common roadkill like rodents, dogs or raccoons.

MoDOT will also tend to deer on the shoulder during normal work hours. If a deer is completely off the roadway, MoDOT will pick it up only if it impedes mail delivery or is in a neighborhood, Roark said.

Staffing levels at MoDOT during this year's winter operations are nearly 30% below requirements, and because of high staff turnover and the employee shortage, MoDOT does not have specialized crews assigned to remove dead animals from the road.

"Where we know that it presents a safety hazard and it's in the roadway, we’re absolutely going to make that a priority to remove that traffic hazard," Roark said. "Outside of that, it's a resource issue. It's balancing the staffing that we have with all of the needs that we have."

The Conservation Department also was responsible for responding to calls about roadkill, and while occasionally employees continue to remove carcasses when they require especially timely removal, the department announced in 2018 that roadkill removal was no longer a service they would provide.

"There was a time when we were stuck picking up a lot of roadkill to the point that we couldn't do our jobs," Doerhoff said. "We were getting several calls a day this time of year for dead deer. We’ve got to be doing other stuff, too."

John George, regional resource management supervisor at the Conservation Department, recalls the Columbia Sanitary Landfill charging additional money to dispose of deer carcasses.

"We don't need to be running around picking them up and taking them to landfills," George said.

"It just became kind of common sense that there's plenty of habitat where that deer was living. It can just be returned to its natural state and let nature take over."

When drivers hit deer in Missouri, they can legally claim possession by filling out a wildlife dispensation permit, which can be requested by contacting the Conservation Department.

"Anybody can take roadkill," Doerhoff said. "They just need to call us."

Those intending to keep any part of a roadkill deer must complete the free permit with a name, address, county and date and include how the animal died. Should the Conservation Department hear about someone who appears to be hunting deer out of season, the permit is proof of legal possession.

To avoid hitting a deer in the first place, keep these safety lessons from the Conservation Department in mind, especially during the peak of mating season:

Don't swerve to avoid hitting wildlife. Apply the brakes and stay in your lane. The Highway Patrol also advises night drivers to watch for the reflection of headlights in the eyes of deer.

"If you’re driving down the road, you see a deer and it's even reasonably close to the road, just slow down," Isabel said. "There's often more than one."

Community reporter, fall 2022 Reach me at [email protected], or in the newsroom at 882-5720.

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