RISKY - Wildlife Mortality from Energy and Transport Infrastructure
During the 2nd OSCARS Annual General Meeting (AGM), we caught up with Tomé Neves from CIBIO to dive into the core mission of RISKY- a pioneering initiative made possible by OSCARS funding.
Every year, millions of birds and mammals die from collisions and electrocutions on roads, power lines, and wind farms. While the green energy transition is essential, it is simultaneously expanding these very infrastructures. Yet, one of the biggest obstacles to effective conservation is fragmented and inaccessible data. This is precisely the Open Science challenge of repositories that RISKY sets out to address.
As a unique cross-cluster initiative bridging ENVRI and LS-RI, RISKY is developing a global, open-access platform that integrates wildlife mortality data from roads, railways, power lines, and wind farms. Paired with advanced analytical tools to predict extinction risks, the project aims to guide nature-friendly, sustainable infrastructure planning.
The project's first concrete result is already live: a comprehensive dataset of over 200,000 roadkill records spanning 2,283 species and 54 countries.