A new venture that aims at reducing the number of wild
animals that are run over on Israel’s roads has been officially launched by the
Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI) and Waze, the world's
largest community-based traffic and navigation app founded in 2008 by three
Israelis and acquired by Google in June 2013.
The new SPNI campaign calls on Israeli drivers to use Waze to
report sightings of wild animals that were run over in open spaces and outside
urban areas.
The reports will be used to map the roads that are most
dangerous to wild animals and provide the data required for creating safe
passages for wildlife, preventing further damage and reducing the number of
animals killed.
Israel’s transportation infrastructure continues to expand
rapidly, providing thousands of kilometers of roads that allow humans to travel
conveniently from place to place, but these same roads are putting wildlife in danger.
For gazelles, porcupines, badgers, turtles, hyenas, otters and many other
species, crossing the road often results in death. Additionally, fragmented
habitats disconnect animal populations from one another, causing demographic
and genetic problems to many species, impairing their long-term survival.
With increasing awareness of the risks that roads pose to
wild animals, Israeli planners have started to build special passages for
animals when constructing new roads or expanding and upgrading old roads.
An eco-bridge was recently constructed as part of Israel’s
rerouting of the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway for this very purpose.
However, dozens of existing roads across the country lack
similar solutions. This is why SPNI and Waze teamed up for this initiative,
soft-launched in November 2016.
Over a four-month testing phase, Israeli Waze users embraced
the app’s new function eagerly. In January alone, they logged 1,416 roadkill
reports.
Using the accumulated data, SPNI experts will create a
Wildlife Red Roads Atlas and examine which animal species are run over most and
why, and what can be done to reduce the number of animal deaths and human
injuries.
Source: Israel21c
