The Taiwan Roadkill Observation Network Data Set.

Unlike the common research-oriented beginning of other Citizen Science projects, Taiwan Roadkill Observation Network (http://www.facebook.com/groups/roadkilled/), originated from a Facebook group of concerned citizens created in August 2011. Due to the power of social media networks, our group members come from a variety of locations, academic backgrounds, and do not come from any particular group, association, or academy. Most members of our community are not acquainted with one another. More interestingly, this was not an intentionally planned Citizen Science project. Rather it was gradually established through discussions and consensus among members. The current appointment of main staff that operates the website, our goals, information-collecting SOP, software tools for back-end use, database platform and this particular website, were all achieved step-by-step under cooperation and numerous adjustments and revisions. The primary mission of Taiwan Roadkill Observation Network is to set up an eco-friendly path to mitigate roadkill challenges. We have four main tenets guiding our organization. Our overarching goal is to 1. Mitigate Roadkill. The following three goals are developed based on this main tenet: (2. Citizen Science) We aim to popularize national discourse on such environmental issues and civil participation in scientific research. (3. Environmental Education) Additionally, we will encourage citizens to mitigate roadkill as the first step in fostering lifelong ecological interest and conservation action. (4. Cherish Life) Last but not least, we establish the concept that all life and species are valuable and we encourage participants to help collect and send roadkill specimens to our lab for preservation . This allows these animals to be used for future studies, making greater value of the loss of life.

Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu islands.

Occurrence points were collected by members of the Taiwan Road Observation Network (TaiRON), a network largely comprised of citizen scientists. There are 3361 active/contributing citizen science members distributed across the entire island (as of 12/2017) with varied backgrounds . Citizen scientists are kept informed of TaiRON’s events and progress through the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/groups/roadkilled/), which has 14,150 members (as of 12/2017), and through educational presentations and workshops given by program managers throughout Taiwan and Taiwan’s surrounding islands. During these presentations and workshops, program managers disseminate progress reports and volunteer packets with materials to aid in road kill observations and specimen collection. The processes for collecting data from the volunteers are outlined below. The specific process in use has undergone several stages of change. The currently employed process is named Stage 3 below in which structured observation records are first sent to a data collecting website operated by the researchers before they are shared on the Facebook group. Stage 1 and Stage 2 were old processes and had since been depreciated after Stage 3 being put into effect.

Endemic Species Research Institute, Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan, Taiwan. Environmental Protection Administration, Executive Yuan, Taiwan.