Identifying hot spots of carnivorous road collisions prioritizing them in Khorasan Razavi province

Throughout the world, roads have a significant devastating impact on natural habitats wildlife, indicating that roads serve as one of the major factors contributing to global biodiversity loss. Expansion of road networks in Khorasan Razavi Province, within and around protected areas, has led to an increase in road casualties, especially carnivores’ road mortalities. The present study aimed to delineate the hotspots of carnivores’ vehicle collisions on the roads located inside and around of the protected areas, investigate the time patterns for the carnivores’ road casualties, and prioritize hotspots of road casualties in the Khorasan Razavi Province. For this purpose, road casualties of carnivores in this province were evaluated between 2011 to 2020. The results showed that a total of 199 carnivores belonging to 11 species of the Canidae, Hyaenidae, Mustelidae and Felidae have died due to vehicle collisions during our study period. The highest numbers of mortalities, in this study, were recorded for the common fox (25.8%), golden jackal (20.7%), grey wolf (14.15%), hyena (13.6%), and wildcat (10.1%), respectively, making a total of 167 cases of recorded collisions (84.34%). The results of this study showed that the majority of road mortalities for these species occurred during autumn, winter, summer, and spring, respectively. Our results also revealed a total of eight hotspots of road mortalities in this province that are mainly situated across the northern, central, and western parts of this province.