Effect of Vehicular Traffic on Wild Animals in Anaikatty Hills, Southern Western Ghats, India Indian Journal of Ecology (2021) 48(1): 108-111 Manuscript Number: 3180 NAAS Rating: 4.96 Abstract: An increase in road networks causing a significant impact on tropical biodiversity, especially the one passing through forest protected zones have a contrary impact on wild animals. The mortality rates of wild animals were investigated by using a fortnight sampling method in the selected stretch of state highway 164, of Anaikatty Hills, Tamil Nadu. The sampling was performed in two different seasons namely dry and wet from June 2015 to December 2019. A total of 96 species and 419 individuals of road kill observed. However, birds were the most affected taxa (30.21 %), followed by reptiles (28.13 %), butterflies (20.83 %), mammals (11.45%), amphibians (5.21 %) and odonates (4.17 %) were least affected by vehicular traffic. The conservation and management implications are essential to prevent the local extinction of wildlife from Anaikatty reserve forest. Keywords: Biodiversity, Conservation, Roadkill, Vehicular traffic L. Prakashand P. Karthik * Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology & Natural History, Anaikatty, Coimbatore 641 108, India *E-mail: karthikwildlifebiology@gmail.com Roads are widely reflected to be a major source of disturbance to wildlife (Plante et al 2019) and now gradually drawn-out into remote regions of wildlife where it can force perpetual barriers to faunal movements (Dean et al 2019). In general, the effects range from habitat fragmentation, changes in animal distribution patterns, movements, the aberration in the population, biological changes, and direct mortalities (Row et al 2007, Shepard et al 2008). Similarly, the road kill often exceeds the natural death rate and has the potential to affect all individuals in a population equally, unlike predation (Periquit et al 2018). The impact of roads on wildlife has been extensively studied outside India (Forman et al 2003), especially the effects of vehicular traffic on biodiversity. In India, infinitesimal attention has been drawn to road ecological studies (Sunder 2004). According to the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), has the second largest road system in the world (Rajvanshi et al 2007). The impact of the road networks and the mortality accounts extend across taxa - from soil invertebrates, butterflies, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals (Boominathan et al 2008). Therefore, the present study investigates the road impact on wildlife fauna in the state highway which runs parallel to Anaikatty reserve forest in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. MATERIAL AND METHODS The present road kill survey was conducted in the stretch of 10 km (Fig. 1) of State Highway (SH 164; 11 6' 58.35” N, o 76 44' 52.19” E and 11 4' 36.88” N, 76 49' 25.71” E) between o o o June 2015 and December 2019. The road stretch is surrounded by tropical thorn forests and tropical mixed dry deciduous (Balasubramanian et al 2015). Besides, the road connects two Indian states namely Kerala and Tamil Nadu, and further heads-up to Silent Valley National Park (SNP), which attracts a large number of tourists annually, and hence there is heavy vehicular traffic in the proposed surveyed study stretch SH 164. The road stretch was surveyed during the fortnight hours on foot once in a day (during early morning 0600 0800 hrs) based on fortnight survey method (Baskaran - and Boominathan 2010). The dead animals were identified to species level in most cases the carcass has removed from the road to avoid the repeat counts (Bhupathy et al 2011). The road stretch was searched thoroughly for any presence of kills' and we do not collect any dead specimens for any future correspondence. Besides, the study restricted to selective orders viz. butterflies, amphibians, reptiles, birds, odonates, and mammals. Species identification was done by using standard field guides and consulting subject experts. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION A total of ~2100 km walk surveys were conducted along the 10 km stretch of the SH 164 road from December 2015 to December 2019. Of, a total of 419 individual kills were observed in five years and a total of 96 species belonging to five orders viz., 5 amphibians, 29 birds, 20 butterflies, 4 odonatans, 11 mammals, and 27 of reptiles (Fig. 2). Among these 96 species, 55 species are Least Concern, and two species are listed as vulnerable ( ) Prionailurus rubiginosus and ( ). Further, the result has been Panthera pardus classified into seasonal patterns (viz. dry and wet season) to