This past weekend, during a tracking course in California (spoiler: I did not ace the final exam), we students were tasked with identifying the above gorgeous creature, found dead by our instructors on — where else? — the highway. This gorgeous little beast is a long-tailed weasel, Neogale frenata, a lithe, furtive carnivore that I’d never before seen in the wild (though I’ve encountered their short-tailed cousins). Beholding this lovely and doomed mustelid, I was reminded, for the billionth time, of how roads both obliterate and reveal wildlife. The long-tailed weasel is an animal seldom glimpsed by humans, and then only as a brief brown flash streaking across the landscape. Cars halt weasels in their tracks, giving us an opportunity to inspect their exquisite bodies — before they decompose and melt into the soil, forever lost.
Agreed it’s the easiest way to see wild animals is by a road and it’s killing them at the same time.. I always have a little sympathy for a dead animal when I see it on the road it’s just heartbreaking.. I’ve actually picked some up move them to the side and tried to give them some kind of a burial if I can .
Oh, that breaks my heart. That’s horrible that that baby had to suffer because of humans once again why can’t there be things that are built for these animals to not meet such a doomed faith I am sure it’s always money involved I mean look at the tunnels why can’t they do the tunnels underneath the roads they can do it they just don’t want to I mean what about getting the prisoners to go out there and dig at the tunnels for free how about that? That’s just the thought I don’t know. It’s just messed up that these poor animals had to die because again like I said of humans it’s not fair. It’s not right and there needs to be other means to help them animal cruelty like barely any laws That enforce a penalty for what they’ve done not saying this is animal cruelty, but it kind of is again There needs to be other ways to help these animals
100% agree
It isn’t just the road that’s killing at risk and endangered species, it corporate development in the Mojave desert. If a company puts up a few solar panels, the EPA is willing to say it mitigates the total destruction of vital habit.
Makes me think of the old 1970s Deep Purple song Killer Machine… I always have that song playing in my head when I see animals that have had their lives prematurely ended: our wonderful killing machines we love so much and absolutely CANNOT live without.