The cassowary is a big, violent, flightless creature that is widely considered the world’s most dangerous bird. It is no match, however, for a more powerful beast: the Australian motorist.
Now scientists are racing against time to save the bird’s dwindling numbers from a roadkill crisis.
Cassowaries draw so many tourists to Australia’s north that some estimate their value to the local economy at A$1 million (£488,000) per bird — meaning the fatal running-over of 24 of them last year was costly in more ways than one.
A trial using artificial intelligence to alert drivers to the birds, which can grow to 6ft 2in (1.9m) tall, has reduced the number of deaths on a Far North Queensland road by more than a third.
Its success has raised hopes the technology can be adapted to recognise other species and cut Australia’s annual roadkill death toll, which is estimated at ten million and believed to be the world’s highest in relation to the human population.
It is not just the animals that are at risk — more than 5 per cent of crashes killing a person in Australia are the result of an animal collision.
Endemic to the lush tropical rain forests of Papua New Guinea and Australia’s far northeast, the slow-moving cassowaries are especially vulnerable to vehicles as they cross roads in search of forest fruit. About 4,000 are believed to survive but numbers are falling, mostly due to collisions with vehicles.
Scientists have trained AI to recognise wandering birds on one of Queensland’s cassowary road hotspots, the Kennedy Highway at Kuranda, about 18 miles northwest of Cairns. A sensor system trained to recognise the birds sends signals to road signs when the cassowaries are detected, warning drivers to reduce speed.
“Hitting or swerving to miss a cassowary at speed can result in serious injury to both the driver and bird,” said Darryl Jones, a road ecologist who co-ordinated the trial for the Queensland government. “Slowing down by even a few kilometres per hour can substantially improve reaction time, braking distance and outcomes in the event of a crash.”
So successful has the technology been in cutting cassowary roadkill that scientists are training it to recognise other vulnerable species, such as koalas.
While kangaroo carcasses litter outback roads on mainland Australia, it is the southern island state of Tasmania that is regarded as the world’s roadkill capital.
“There’s that mentality here that when you’re travelling, that you just want to put your foot down,” says Donald Knowler, a British expatriate who has observed and chronicled Tasmania’s wildlife for more than two decades. “And if animals get in the way, especially at night, it’s dangerous to swerve and try and avoid them,” says Knowler whose 2015 book, Riding the Devil’s Highway, examined the island’s roadkill crisis and found its intensity unprecedented.
Tasmanian devils are buffeted by disease and speeding drivers
ALAMY
Each year Tasmania’s 400,000 licensed drivers are estimated to kill 300,000 mammals and birds on the island’s roughly 11,000 miles of roads. The toll includes 3,000 Tasmanian devils, whose numbers are also suffering from the spread of a facial disease, and 15,000 wallabies.
• Last healthy Tasmanian devils being wiped out by speeding drivers
Among the more promising new technologies employed on the island is a “virtual fence” device first used in Austria to reduce vehicle collisions with wild boar and deer. These are attached to roadside poles and emit a buzzing sound and flash when triggered by vehicle headlights, scaring away animals near roads.
In some locations the devices have halved the number of Tasmanian devils killed by cars.
On Sydney’s expanding southern outskirts, where koala populations are vulnerable to vehicles — koala roadkill deaths have doubled over the past two years — researchers are trialling a new light-coloured road paving in the hope that animals will be more visible at night. One-way koala escape doors are being installed where roadside wildlife fences are in place, preventing the animals from passing back into traffic.
However, the difficulties of protecting animals from traffic is starkly illustrated by Australia’s most expensive piece of animal protection infrastructure: a unique bridge completed last year at a cost of A$40 million for cassowaries to cross a Queensland highway.
Queensland values each cassowary as worth nearly £500,000 to the local economy
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The high cost, and doubts that the birds are using the bridge, has prompted derision. Shane Knuth, the local state MP, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation it was “probably the worst project I have ever encountered in the past 20 years of politics”.