Pacific Newt Roadkill: 183 found dead today; no live ones seen

January 9, 2019 (Wednesday)
I took 250 pictures of newt roadkill on this short stretch of Alma Bridge Rd. in one hour.

There were 139 fresh newt carcasses (i.e., the belly was bright orange/yellow or there was fresh blood). In addition, there were 111 partially decomposed carcasses. For these, I had to compare each one to all previous observations to make sure they weren’t counted twice. This was a very time-consuming and tedious process that involved hundreds of visual comparisons, but I think it’s important to go through this exercise in order to have an accurate death count. (I wish I had visual comparison software to do this for me!) I ended up adding 44 out of 111 to the project.

See: https://www.inaturalist.org/calendar/truthseqr/2018/1/9
(photos of dead newts were originally submitted in groups of 10 per observation, but later decoupled)

Coverage: (30%) I surveyed Alma Bridge Rd. between St. Joseph's Hill OSP and Los Gatos Rowing Club

Rainfall: (MTD: 1.31 in; YTD: 7.52 in) We've had 1.3 inches of rain in the past 5 days, and it was raining this morning.

Traffic: There wasn't much traffic on the road this morning: several white pickups (Santa Clara County maintenance?), one MROSD ranger truck, one police van, a heavy truck scraping fallen rocks (and probably dead newts) off the road, and several cars and SUVs. I didn't see any semi-trucks coming from or going to the quarry.

Note: This journal post was updated on 02/10/2019 with the latest information: fresh vs. decomposed carcasses, % Coverage, Rainfall, Traffic, and link to observations.

Posted on January 12, 2019 11:59 PM by truthseqr