ANÁLISIS ESPACIAL DE LAS COLISIONES DE VEHÍCULOS CON ANIMALES SILVESTRES EN LA RED VIARIA DE LA PROVINCIA DE LUGO (ESPAÑA)

Abstract

Wildlife-Vehicle collisions are an important risk factor for road safety, as well as an environmental impact from road networks. Lugo is one of the provinces in Spain with higher number of animal collisons. Only in 2007 a total of 726 accidents were registered, being 275 caused by roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), and 274 by wild boar (Sus scrofa). The current study aims to enhacne the knowledge about traffic accidents caused by wildlife, and about the possible mitigation measures. To do so, reports were used from the provincial section of Spain’s traffic administration registering widlife-caused accidents, selecting those related to roe deer and wild boar. A geographic information system was used to locate the accident points, thus transforming them into geo-referenced data. Specific data (i.e., species, date, time, etc.) was associated to them, and their grouping was analysed using spatial statistics, defining the most dangerous road sections. Finally, the adequateness of different mitigation methods was assessed.. Keywords: Wildlife-vehicle accidents; spatial planning; environmental impact assessment; spatial statistics; geographic information systems