Lockdown's Silver Lining? Different Levels of Roadkill during the COVID-19 Times in Lithuania.

The impact of COVID-19 restrictions on human and vehicular mobility on the number of roadkills of wild mammals, and roe deer in particular, was assessed in Lithuania. We statistically analyzed the distribution of all mammals and roe deer () as the most abundant species annually from 2002 to 2022 and monthly from 2020 to 2021, including during the two restriction periods. Notably, there was a marked decrease in roadkill incidents on main, national and regional roads, particularly in April-May 2020 (the beginning of lockdown period I) and November-December 2020 (the beginning of lockdown period II), 5.

Factors Affecting Roadkills of Semi-Aquatic Mammals.

We previously showed that registration efforts and traffic intensity explain 90% of variation in mammal roadkill numbers, 70% of variation in the numbers of recorded species and 40% of diversity variation. Here we analyze semiaquatic mammal roadkill in Lithuania in 2002-2021, relating these to the monitoring effort. From 39,936 analyzed roadkill, the European beaver () was registered 60 times, American mink () 26 times, otter () 22 times and muskrat () 3 times.

Roadkills as a Method to Monitor Raccoon Dog Populations.

The raccoon dog () is one of the most frequently killed species on Lithuanian roads. As an invasive species, up-to-date knowledge of population size, trends and spatial distribution is critically important both for species assessment and for the planning of control measures. In Lithuania, however, raccoon dog surveys have not been carried out since 1997.