Reptile Road Mortality originated from a virtual group created on Facebook in August 2011. It was initially a group created on a whim that unintentionally received a lot of attention, and starting in 2012, became an official citizen science project named the “Taiwan Roadkill Observation Network” (TaiRON). At first the group focused on recording only reptile roadkill observations, but members soon reached a consensus to gradually include all terrestrial vertebrates, including mammals, birds and amphibians, and even expanded to invertebrate land crabs. Many participants could not bear to see unfortunate wild animals just dead and exposed on roads. They hoped that these animals could die with dignity and make the most of their lives, thus it was an initiative that encouraged collection and sending of carcasses to be preserved at the Taiwan Endemic Species Research Institute began in 2012. Not all of the wildlife dead on roads or by roadside are killed by cars. It could also be due to other causes, such as infection, pesticide or rat poison, contamination of heavy metal, fatal attack from stray cats or dogs, human attack, wildlife poaching, flying into windows or electric poles, etc. Those are phenomena directly or indirectly caused by human, so they also worth more attention and mitigation. Therefore, Reptile Road Mortality includes records from all road death phenomena (wild animals dead on roads or by roadside; not limited to car accidents). Besides roadkill, our issues of concern and projects are have gradually increased, including the monitoring of rabies, monitoring of agricultural poisons, monitoring of environmental heavy metals, window-kill, exotic species (influences on wild animals), etc.

We appreciate all forms of support. In the light of unfortunate conditions, our project provides a database for the accumulation of high quality information and preservation of all kinds of specimens quickly. The project frequently and gets attention from the media with reports of many articles and documentaries.We also publish promotional articles and attend international conferences to spread our message and introduce others to our project. In order to make it convenient for the public to learn about Reptile Road Mortality, we display all of the related achievements here, including our searchable roadkill database, roadkill data visualization, promotional articles, academic reports, news reports, members’ honor roll of contributions, etc. You are welcome to peruse our website and inform us of issues or phenomena we have not discovered. Let’s seek solutions together and make Taiwan safe for its unique wildlife.

Peer review paper

7. Chyn, K., T.-E. Lin, D. P. Wilkinson, J. L. Tracy, A. M. Lawing, and L. A. Fitzgerald. 2021. Fine-scale roadkill risk models: understanding the intersection of wildlife and roads. Biodiversity and Conservation. 30 (1):139-164.

6. Huang, J. C.-C., W.-J. Chen, and T.-E. Lin. 2021. Landscape and Species Traits Co-Drive Roadkills of Bats in a Subtropical Island. Diversity 13:117.

5. Kristina Chyn, Te-En Lin, Yu-Kai Chen, Chih-Yun Chen, and Lee A.Fitzgerald. 2019. The magnitude of roadkill in Taiwan: Patterns and consequences revealed by citizen science. Biological Conservation, 237(2019):317-326.

4. Hong, S-Y, C. Morrissey, H.-S. Lin, K-S Lin, W-L Lin, C-T Yao, T-E Lin, F-T Chan, and Y-H Sun. 2019. Frequent detection of anticoagulant rodenticides in raptors sampled in Taiwan reflects government rodent control policy. Science of the Total Environment, 691(15):1051-1058.

3. Lin, T.-E., T.-Y. Chen, H.-L. Wei, R. Richard, and S.-P. Huang. 2019. Low cold tolerance of the invasive lizard Eutropis multifasciata constrains its potential elevation distribution in Taiwan. Journal of Thermal Biology 82:115-122.

2. Lin, Y.-P., J. Anthony, W.-C. Lin, W.-Y. Lien, J. R. Petway, and T.-E. Lin. 2019. Spatiotemporal identification of roadkill probability and systematic conservation planning. Landscape Ecology 34:1-19.

1. Hsu, C.-H., T.-E. Lin, W.-T. Fang, and C.-C. Liu. 2018. Taiwan Roadkill Observation Network: An Example of a Community of Practice Contributing to Taiwanese Environmental Literacy for Sustainability. Sustainability 10:3610.

Conference Abstract

22. Investigate the invasion history and the possible invasion site of alien invasive species Eutropis Multifasciata by road killing point.(2018)

21. Taiwan Roadkill Observation Network, from opportunity roadkill data at social media to systematic roadkill survey.(2018)

20. Preliminary result of participant's motivation and learning outcome in TaiRON.(2018)

19. Modeling and identifying roadkill hotspots with professional and crowdsourced data for prioritization of mitigation planning.(2018)

18. Systematic road mortality survey and estimate.(2018)

17. The first overview of bat roadkills in Taiwan.(2018)

16. Projecting Road Kill Risk for Taiwan’s Reptiles and Amphibians.(2018)

15. Using Facebook to find citizen scientists for systematic roadkill surveys.(2018)

14. Evaluation of heavy metal accumulation in birds using opportunistic samples. Geophysical Research Abstracts.(2018)

13. Assessment of the exposure to anticoagulant rodenticides in three raptor species of Taiwan.(2017)

12. Spatiotemporal volunteer data in development of spatiotemporal roadkill model and analysis of roadkill hotspot zoning.(2017)

11. Application of Species Identification via Mitochondrial COI DNA Barcoding for Viperidae and Elapidae Species in Taiwan. (2016)

10. Communal Data Workflow in TaiRON (Taiwan Roadkill Observation Network) (2016)

9. Using citizen science roadkill data with ecological niche modeling to project herpetofaunal road mortality hotspots in Taiwan (2016)

8. Deaths bird survey, Taiwan Roadkill Observation Network (2016)

7. The Road-killed Raptors Observed from the Facebook Group「Taiwan Roadkill Observation Network」in Taiwan during 2011-2015 (2015)

6. Social Media as Citizen Science Platforms for Monitoring Road-Kills of Wildlife in Taiwan. (2015)

5. Collaborative Ecological Observation: Issues in Moving from Social Media to Research Data (2015)

4. Citizen participation in scientific works: Issues, methods, and tools (2014)

3. Facebook group as a citizen science platform to monitor the roadkill events of wildlife in Taiwan (2014)

2. A Citizen Science Project on Roadkill in Taiwan: Facebook Groups as a Corresponding Platform (2012)

1. Harvesting crowdsourcing biodiversity data from Facebook group (2012)