Traffic networks and wildlife management: economic aspects of wildlife-vehicle collisions in Hungary

The public road network puts significant pressure on wildlife species. Road-related mortality is among the first causes of death of huntable species as well. In their case, it causes measurable economic damage to the Hungarian game management sector through wildlife-vehicle collisions (WVCs). Our main goal was to analyze temporospatial patterns of roadkills from the perspective of wildlife management and quantify the economic loss of the sector using WVC data from the Hungarian Game Management Database and legally established wildlife management values of huntable species. We found that a total of 318,480 collisions were reported by game management units during the study period. Our investigation found that the highest annual economic damage suffered by the sector was in 2021 with 5.768 million euros between 2000 and 2021. According to our study, the most threatened species are pheasant (Phasianus colhicus), brown hare (Lepus europeaus), and roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), their occurrence in WVCs determines the economic loss of counties. Our investigation found that small or big game-dominant counties suffer significantly less financial damage from WVCs than the ones with mixed populations of the two animal groups. JEL-codes: O13, L92, Q56