How often have you run over a badger or a fox on the road? Or a hare or rabbit? Or a hedgehog or a squirrel? It's difficult not to hit rooks at harvest time. Some of them seem almost to dare you as they go on eating, to the last moment, the oats or other spillage from the farmers' lorries. Even at this time of year, when the animals are producing or nursing their young, you find quite a few casualties. Mostly, in this experience, foxes and badgers, and that is largely on roads going northwards from Dublin. Now a cutting arrives from a Swiss newspaper to show that the motorists has bigger problems to deal with than we have. The main picture shows three wild boars running, and quite clearly running very fast, across a motorway. what would happen to them if you came up at speed and could not stop. Perhaps, more important is what would happen to you, for they are formidable beasts seen in the open. They may be smaller than bulls you see in the ring with toreadors, but they look tougher, more compact and almost armour-plated. And they have pathways of their own, and if humans choose to build roads there, they had better look out. These are wild animals and may have been following a track for generations through wood and marshes and where man runs his roads. And they are not easily diverted.
The total of all animals found dead on roads amount to 17,000 annually. The break-down gives 8, 213 roe deer, 5.878 foxes, 1,674 badgers, 750 hares, 339 red deer, 189 wild boar, 28 chamoix and 3 ibex. The official giving these figures tells the newspaper that, of course, the total must be much higher, for many bodies will not be found or will be swept away uncounted. Railway deaths are estimated at 2,000. Mobility, says the article, is necessary not only for the humans. Wild animals have to move about, particularly to get to sources of their food, water and shelter, including burrows or other living quarters. And that must take them often over dangerous roads where, in their ancestral memory, there was once a clear path. Then, in Switzerland, with a climate of more extremes than ours, there will be what amounts to inland migration. In some cases, from memory, underpass and overpasses have been provided for animals, but that seems not possible on sufficient scales.
Finally, of all motor car accidents in the country 2.4 per cent involve running into animals. And while you might hardly notice running over a small animal, you would be lucky to come unscathed from contact with a wild boar. And Switzerland is roughly the size of our country. Y