全球道路动物死亡负担的不平等加剧了中低收入国家濒危物种面临的碰撞风险

1. 信息

2. 摘要

Global development relies on vast and expanding road networks, yet the global distribution of the wildlife mortality they cause remains poorly quantified. Here we show, using researcher-led surveys, global citizen-science records and a high-resolution national dataset for China, that wildlife-vehicle collisions disproportionately burden biodiversity in low- and middle-income countries. After standardising for species pools and sampling effort, low- and middle-income countries bear a heavier roadkill burden than high-income countries, with the strongest disparities reaching 2–4-fold for threatened vertebrates but much weaker contrasts for non-threatened species. This reflects elevated collision rates among threatened fauna rather than a broader list of affected species. In China, the same pattern unfolds along a land-use intensity gradient: transformed landscapes elevate risk for common generalists while progressively filtering threatened taxa from the roadscape. Overall, expanding transport networks concentrate contemporary collision burden on threatened biodiversity in low- and middle-income countries. This study shows that wildlife-vehicle collisions place a heavier standardized burden on threatened vertebrates in low- and middle-income countries, highlighting an overlooked inequality in infrastructure-related biodiversity loss.

3. 图表

4. 引用

@article{li2026,
  author = {Yuhang Li and Zixi Zhao and Xinmiao Chen and Kai Wang and Haozhong Si and Linyou Gu and Zhenqi Wang and Jiahua Xing and Feng Xu and Yang Liu and Zhongqiu Li},
  title = {Global inequality in roadkill burden concentrates collision risk on threatened species in low- and middle-income countries},
  journal = {Nature Communications},
  year = {2026},
  volume = {17},
  number = {1},
  pages = {8344},
  doi = {10.1038/s41467-026-74963-4},
  publisher = {Springer Science and Business Media LLC},
}