High animal mortality on Irish roads

PEOPLE regularly travelling the roads of Ireland cannot but notice the number of wild animals being run over.

You can scarcely go a mile of any road nowadays without coming across the carcass of a bird, rabbit, rat, hedgehog, fox or badger which has fallen victim to increasing traffic volumes.

The other day, a woman from the Innishannon area of Co Cork phoned to say she had found two badgers dead on the road. She speculated they may have been a mating pair and could possibly have left orphans behind in their sett — the underground tunnel system in which badgers live.