Roadkill Detective! Passionate Volunteers Record Animal Roadkill, Collect Carcasses for Research

(Lead image by Su Long Crown, taken 2013/10/07 at: Yunlin County. Who was roadkilled? Possibly a "lizard")

After people die, their bodies can become "silent mentors" for many outstanding medical professionals. What about animal bodies? Many animals die on roads through no fault of their own, "but in fact these roadkilled animal carcasses and specimens can also provide us with a great deal of research." Lin Te-en, assistant research fellow at the Endemic Species Research Institute, says that behind road kill there may be many hidden causes, "it may really be a traffic accident, or it may be poisoning, or animal disease." Only by grasping the actual roadkill situation and conducting statistical research can we know which roadkill hotspot sections need improvement, whether there is any new disease to prevent and control, and even which biological habitats need to be maintained.

So in 2011 Lin Te-en founded the "Creeping Around Everywhere (Roadkill Club)" public Facebook group, calling on passionate volunteers to collect and record wildlife road deaths and animal carcasses. At first it only recorded roadkilled reptiles, but later it gradually expanded to record mammals, birds, amphibians, land crabs and other wild animals; now it has further cooperated with Academia Sinica to establish the "Taiwan Roadkill Observation Network" as a cloud database, for the public to upload photos of roadkill records and look up roadkill information.