Important work: Jenny Oakley’s daughter Kimberly helps to care for the wildlife. Here she is watching over ‘Lightening’, the orphaned joey who lost his parents on the road.
Local wildlife controller Jenny Oakley says careless driving is resulting in a large amount of wildlife carnage on the roads.
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“People are just driving too fast and they don’t stop, they don’t slow down at all when they see something — they just keep powering through,” Mrs Oakley said.
A combination of recent weather events and the time of year mean that more animals are on the roads than usual.
“The snakes had started to move around a bit before the floods came; they start to move up because the atmospheric pressure changes, so they are aware of that and they start to move away from the water a little bit,” Mrs Oakley said.
Other reptiles, such as turtles and lizards, are also making their way on to the roads as the weather heats up.
Mrs Oakley has observed that people are aiming for snakes on the roads when driving and are collecting lizards and turtles in the process.
Tender care: Kimberly Oakley holds an orphaned baby blue-tongue lizard, who is almost ready to be released back into his natural habitat.
“They (the animals) are moving around looking for new places because the water has come, they would have moved around anyway at this time of year looking for a new dam or food,” she said.
“I’m unimpressed with people’s attitude to wildlife at the moment, it’s almost like it doesn’t matter.”
Mrs Oakley also warns that many species of birds, such as tawny frogmouths and owls, are dying when the parents are killed on the roads and the young have no way to feed themselves.
“There is problems with food as well because of the floods, the animals that hunted in areas haven’t been able to hunt, so they will have moved out of our areas where the water is, especially raptors,” she said.
Recovery: This snake-necked turtle was hit by a car. The damage to his shell is repairing and he will soon be released.
Mrs Oakley said the best practice when encountering wildlife on the roads was to move the animal to a safe nearby area, provided you felt confident handling it.
“Get them off the road and keep them safe, in an area similar or not too far away,” she said.
“We are going to have an extinction rate higher than we have ever had because of the last couple of years with the bushfires and the floods — the animals haven’t had a chance to recoup.
“Their ability to rebuild is limited when an area gets burnt out and then it gets flooded out.”
Mrs Oakley said we needed bushland corridors to connect the larger expanses of natural landscape in Tallarook, Puckapunyal and Seymour Bushland Park.
The corridors between larger bushland areas give animals safe passage, allowing the necessary migration to occur without the risk of crossing roads.
“Breeding capacity is great but if they can’t move from one place to another they are getting hit on the roads,” Mrs Oakley said.
“We don’t put aside enough land for these animals to recover from things like bushfires, droughts and floods.”
Hop to it: ‘Lightening’ the joey at Mrs Oakley’s home, where she cares for sick and injured wildlife.
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