Local wildlife conservationists fear relaxed coronavirus travel restrictions and resurgent traffic will lead to more cassowaries dying on north Queensland roads.
A juvenile southern cassowary was found dead beside the Kennedy Highway near Kuranda on Tuesday morning with injuries suggesting it had been hit by a vehicle.
The chick belonged to a southern cassowary affectionately known to locals as Elvis, which has now had three of its four young killed by motorists in eight months.
Male cassowaries raise chicks for about nine months after they hatch.
Kuranda-based cassowary advocate Paul Webster said sightings of the endangered species near major roads had become more frequent during the COVID-19 lockdown.
"Obviously, with less traffic, the birds feel more at ease crossing the road and they get that false sense of security. [They think], 'we have less traffic, it's easy to wander around with my chicks'," he said.
Mr Webster said the timing of yesterday's death was no coincidence.
"It's interesting, restrictions got lifted and within 72 hours with more traffic on the road we've had this incident where we've lost a chick."
The young bird's death led to renewed calls for modifications to the busy stretch of road to protect the species' fragile population.
"It's alarming because the traffic on that road, the carriage-rate is now 10,000-plus a day [and there's] 1,200 commercial vehicles on that road a day," Mr Webster said.
"It's way beyond its capacity. It just doesn't give any time for wildlife to cross there safely.
"The Macalister Range has maybe 50 to 60 cassowaries within that range and we would've lost 10-to-20-percent of those birds within the past 10 years."
'No easy fix'
Mr Webster said conservation groups had lobbied the Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR) for many years but conceded there was no easy-fix.
"The range road has got severe limitations as far as expansion goes," he said.
"People have suggested speedbumps; you can't, because road users would be killed hitting the speedbumps too fast.
"It's quite complex to resolve the issue and find appropriate mitigation. It's not a simple fix, unfortunately."
A TMR spokesperson said the department was aware of the latest death and took cassowary protection seriously by working closely with cassowary advocacy groups to prevent road strikes.
The spokesperson said TMR was undertaking a $100,000 study to develop a Cassowary Strike Management Plan and had implemented safety measures including signage, monitoring cameras and apps, and vegetation management.
TMR was also progressing a $10-million project to build a southbound overtaking lane on the Bruce Highway at Smiths Gap with a "world-first" cassowary land bridge linking tracts of world-heritage listed rainforest.
Both TMR and conservationists have urged motorists to slow down driving through "cassowary country".
