Comparison of environmental, biological and anthropogenic causes of wildlife–vehicle collisions among three large herbivore species

Wildlife–vehicle collisions are of increasing concern with regards to the continuous and 5 accelerating anthropogenic development. Preventing and mitigating collisions with wildlife will 6 require a better understanding of the environmental and biological drivers of collision risks. Because 7 species of large mammals differ in terms of food requirements, habitat selection and movement 8 behaviours we tested at the management unit level if the density of collisions with red deer, roe deer 9 and wild boar differed in terms of spatial distribution and explanatory factors. From 20,275 10 documented collisions in France between years 1990 and 2006, we found marked differences in the 11 most influential environmental factors accounting for the density of collisions among the three 12 species. The effect of road density was higher for the red deer than for the two other species and did 13 not level off at our spatial-scale of observation. As expected, the annual hunting harvest – interpreted 14 as a proxy of population abundance – was positively associated with the density of collisions for all 15 species, being the strongest for red deer. While the collision density decreased with the proportion of 16 forest in a management unit for wild boar, it increased with the fragmentation of forests for red deer 17 that commute among forest patches between day and night. To reduce the number of wildlife– 18 . CC-BY-ND 4.0 International license was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. It is made available under a The copyright holder for this preprint (which this version posted October 24, 2019. . https://doi.org/10.1101/385161 doi: bioRxiv preprint