Hong Kong roadkill count launched to reduce wildlife deaths on roads

Photographer sets up Facebook page to document animals killed under the wheels in the hope it will give an idea of the scale of destruction and generate suggestions for ways to reduce roadkill

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The Hong Kong warty newt is among the wildlife species prone to being killed on Hong Kong roads. Illustration: Brian Wang

Published: 7:00am, 25 Sep 2016Updated: 7:00am, 25 Sep 2016

The Hong Kong warty newt, the city’s only salamander species, is not a big explorer. Still, what the species lacks in wanderlust and speed, it makes up for in thick-headed determination. If instinct points it towards a suitable patch of forest, where it may spend most of the year, it will get there at all costs.

So after breeding in one of the streams that feed into the Lam Tsuen River, legions of the amphibians come ashore at Shui Wo Village in Tai Po each spring, and head for the woods.

Unfortunately, between their starting point and their destination lies a single-track lane flanked by rows of village houses, and this is where danger lurks.

Anthony Lau Yin-kun at a traffic blackspot in Shui Wo Village. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Anthony Lau, a PhD candidate at the University of Hong Kong who has been studying amphibians and reptiles for seven years, counted 194 such creatures from 10 species, including Hong Kong warty newts, on the asphalt lane in the space of six evenings a few years ago. A quarter of them had been flattened, run over by unsuspecting drivers, their corpses awaiting the next storm to be swept away.

“Hong Kong newts don’t stand a chance against vehicles leaving and entering the village at high speed,” Lau says of the creatures, which are the size of a house gecko. The death toll is highest on rainy nights, he says.