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Driving to country Queensland

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The widening of the highway will make for better flowing traffic, but has a huge impact for wildlife, not far down the road a Walaby didn't make it across.

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Rabbit on edge of town

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Mouse on driveway

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A populated area in the district, it is evident that the ibis was not killed naturally

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Sign on road leaving Brisbane  many local groups volunteer their time to help animals who survive being struck. This is vital for the survival for threaten species such as the Koala

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Another ibis killed in carpark

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A toad discovered in carpark

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108, 543 brushtail possums are hit by cars every year (Australians for Animals 2018)

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Gecko in car park

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25% Ella Biss
25% Serena Sharpe
25% Baibin (Benjamin) Wang
25% Tom Taylor

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Photo Essay - Urbanisation and Wildlife in Brisbane

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Photo Essay - Urbanisation and Wildlife in Brisbane

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As the world moves to ever-increasing levels of urbanisation animals’ ability to survive is being undermined. Evidence of this can be seen in growing amounts of road kill in the Brisbane area. Our group (Benjamin Wang, Serena Sharpe, Tom Taylor and Ella Biss) has captured this environmental issue through PhotoVoice; a participant-lead form of social science research that involves taking a series of photos within the community.

Urbanisation is the process of humans developing and expanding city limits and populations. It is an important issue because it creates an imbalance in ecosystems, reduces biodiversity, and degrades natural habitat which is necessary to provide food, shelter and breeding grounds for wildlife. We chose to highlight this topic with photos of road kill as it is a very visual show of conflict between animals and humans and we wanted to bring this struggle to the public’s attention.

We encountered many successes and difficulties in our research process before arriving at our final project. Our initial photos were vague and not specific to problems aligned with increasing urbanisation. They featured signage such as “don’t feed the birds” and “watch for wildlife” and photos from wildlife sanctuaries. We wanted our audience to instantly recognise that our images were making a statement about the severe impact of urbanisation on wildlife, which we weren’t getting from these first images, therefore we decided to pursue more graphic images.

New difficulties presented themselves here as we wanted to photograph road kill, but this is usually found in dangerous locations such as the highway and blind corners. This challenge was overcome easily enough by seeking photo opportunities in safe areas and the results were worthwhile because of the direct link road kill can provide between human action and wildlife mortality. The images we have produced evoke a strong emotional response when viewed both individually and as a collection. We hope that when people see them this response allows them to better understand the hardship that urbanisation is imposing on wildlife in Australia and elsewhere.

Humans have been compromising the safety and wellbeing of wildlife for centuries now, urbanisation and particularly road kill is just the latest manifestation of this. Our group has employed our knowledge of social science and C. Wright Mills’ sociological imagination (1970) to identify a mundane thing like road kill as a symptom of a much larger problem. Roads, mankind’s creation, divide natural landscapes, isolate wildlife populations and witness thousands of collisions between vehicles and animals every year (Rowden, Steinhardt, & Sheehan, 2008). Species most effected in these collisions include possums, kangaroos and koalas whose numbers are decreasing rapidly. As animals are crucial to the upkeep of ecological balance in Australia and all of Earth, it is important to work to relieve the stress that urbanisation is placing on many species. If the rates at which we are seeing road kill continue to increase, then there may be dire consequences to ecological balance.

All of our research and findings have lead us to believe that the negative effects of urbanisation on wildlife are tragic. The animals who are dying because of the direct actions of humans are becoming increasingly rare in their natural homes. Is it fair that we, one of the most intelligent species on Earth, are so careless in our capability to expand our cities that we are destroying the environment? Is it fair?

The purpose of this PhotoVoice project was to raise awareness about the consequences of increasing urbanisation for Australian wildlife. We have shown that animals are dying as a result of more people and more roads and now we put it to our audience to act for positive change.

REFERENCES
Mills, C. W. (1970). The Sociological Imagination. Harmondsworth : Penguin.

Rowden, P., Steinhardt, D., & Sheehan, M. (2008). Road crashes involving animals in Australia. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 1865-1871.