This story was originally published by the nonprofit newsroom, Crosstown and is republished here with permission.More animals are being run over on Los Angeles streets than ever before, and the lingering effects of the pandemic may be partly to blame.
Through November of this year, the city’s MyLA311 service has fielded 31,093 requests for “dead animal removal,” an increase of more than a thousand from the same time last year. It marks a 37% increase from five years prior, and is the fifth straight year of increases.
Fraser Shilling of the Road Ecology Center at the University of California, Davis, studies the impact of transportation on animal populations. While one of the drivers of the increase is the continual loss of habitat from urban development, Shilling says the after effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are also playing a role. The protracted lockdown sparked a boom in pet adoptions which, he says, has now transformed into an increase in animals being let go by their owners…