Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Caught in the Headlights.”
4 million
Miles of roads in the United States.
226 million
Number of vehicles registered in the United States.
23 trillion
Vehicle miles traveled in the United States in 2002
6.3 million
Number of automobile accidents annually in the United States
253,000
Number of animal-vehicle accidents annually
50
Estimated percentage of vehicle-large animal collisions that go unreported.
90
Percentage of animal-vehicle collisions that involve deer
$2,000
Average minimum cost for repairing a vehicle after a collision with a deer
1 million
Number of vertebrates run over each day in the United States (a rate of one every 11.5 seconds).
200
Number of human deaths annually resulting from vehicle-wildlife collisions.
6
Number of bears killed last year by vehicles in Yellowstone National Park.
1,559
Number of animals killed on Yellowstone National Park roads from 1989-2003. Figure includes 556 elk, 192 bison, 135 coyotes, 112 moose, 24 antelope and 3 bobcats.
2,349
Number of large animals killed on New Mexico roads in 2001. Figure includes 30 black bears, 160 elk and 600 deer.
51,000
Number of vertebrates killed in and around Saguaro National Park by automobiles each year. Figure includes 1,400 birds, 6,500 mammals, 26,000 reptiles and 17,000 amphibians.
25,000
Number of Roadkill Bingo games sold by the Colorado company that invented the game.
93
Percentage by which desert tortoise roadkill was reduced after fencing and culverts were installed on one 15-mile stretch of Mojave Desert highway.
40
Percentage by which deer-vehicle collisions were reduced after installation of a deer crosswalk system in northeast Utah.
HR3550
Number of House transportation bill that would require states to plan for wildlife crossings when improving or constructing highways.
Sources for statistics on pages 9, 11, 12: U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration, Wildlands CPR, Wildlife Crossings Toolkit ( www.wildlifecrossings.info/beta2.htm ), National Park Service, New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, Defenders of Wildlife, U.S. Humane Society
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Roadkill statistics.
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