Roads kill billions of wild animals annually, representing one of the largest direct human causes of wildlife mortality, with individual suffering from collision injuries making road mortality a significant welfare concern.
Road mortality is a welfare problem as well as a conservation one. Animals struck by vehicles experience acute trauma, and those not killed immediately may suffer painful injuries for prolonged periods before death or intervention. The welfare scale of road mortality dwarfs most other human-caused animal suffering in visibility, but because it occurs incrementally and distributed across road networks, it receives less attention than concentrated welfare failures. Infrastructure solutions like wildlife crossing structures address both individual welfare and population conservation simultaneously. Drivers can contribute through speed reduction in wildlife-active zones and awareness of seasonal migration periods.