PHILLIP Island resident Ronald Day was among a range of witnesses, including animal rescue organisations, local government members, academic experts, and insurers who contributed to the inquiry into wildlife roadstrike earlier this month and in August.
While comprehensive figures do not exist, Wildlife Victoria data show a 43 per cent increase in the number of animals killed or injured by a vehicle in the past four years and RACV reported almost 7000 claims that involved impact with an animal in 2024.
Ronald Day has been recording and documenting roadkill for the past seven years and is acknowledged as being a Citizen Scientist by Bass Coast Shire Council (BCSC), Victoria University (VU) and Phillip Island Nature Park (PINP).
In 2018, Ronald suggested three options to the BCSC for mitigating the number of wildlife road strikes on Phillip Island, including virtual fencing, reducing speed limits and a dawn-to-dusk speed reduction.
The BCSC chose to trial virtual fencing and this trial was subsequently conducted by Dr Christine Connelly, environmental lecturer VU, in collaboration with Dr Duncan Sutherland, senior scientist PINP with Ronald collecting the roadkill data on an 80km/h, 3.6 kilometre, high-incidence section of the Cowes/Rhyll Road.
In his submission to the inquiry, Ronald stated the trial was comprehensive and robust and held over a three-year period. Unfortunately, the virtual fence trial didn’t meet expectations in reducing roadkill.
Since January this year, Ronald has again been conducting daily roadkill counts on the Cowes/Rhyll Road. To June he counted 224 wildlife strikes of 19 species, including 114 wallabies.
Ronald believes that slowing motorists down is the key to reducing wildlife strikes and referred to data from November 2019 to January 2020 where 188,496 vehicles used the road and 43 per cent exceeded the specified speed limit.
“Ask yourself what hope for example, does a slow-moving echidna or longneck turtle (and there are many in this area) have of safely crossing this road during daylight hours with this volume of speeding motorists, not to mention or overlook the night time nocturnally active wildlife, blinded, confused, and often frozen in position on the road by approaching blinding headlights, particularly on blind-sided curves and bends, also the down-side of hills and crests,” Donald stated in his submission to the hearing.
“Many, many studies have proven lower speeds (led to) reduced wildlife impacts (which led to) increased road user safety. The lower speeds provide more “reaction time” for both the driver and animal to safely avoid an impact.”
Donald believes that trialling dynamic signage with a system that is programmed to simultaneously switch at predetermined light levels for a dawn-to-dusk speed could mitigate the incidence of wildlife strikes.
These signs are continually monitored (24/7) for operational performance and battery capacity via the 4G Network and have the ability to record vehicle numbers and speeds, as well as detect and warn speeding motorists to slow down.
“Due to wildlife presence and given that nearly half of motorists ignore the 80km/h speed limit, driving at night on this road is extremely risky for vehicle and occupants, I urge the committee to consider recommending a trial for “Dynamic Signage” on this road,” submitted Ronald.
Ronald does not believe that this method, to mitigate wildlife strikes, has been installed or trialled in Australia before.
“The implementation of dynamic signage could set a new benchmark for innovative road safety measures in areas with high wildlife activity. By leveraging real-time data and adaptable speed limits, this trial could serve as a precedent for other regions facing similar challenges,” stated Ronald.
