What is it about?
The intersection of wildlife and people on roads raises two critical issues: the barrier and mortality effects of roads on wildlife and risks to people from animal-vehicle collisions (AVCs). We developed a decision-support tool based on weighted priorities for mitigation planning across 7,900 km of roads over an 84,000-km2 area of southern Alberta, Canada. We built connectivity models for four species (prairie rattlesnake, grizzly bear, mule deer, and pronghorn) and a species-neutral structural connectivity model. We integrated AVC risk and wildlife connectivity to prioritize roads sections for road mitigation to make highways safer for motorists and wildlife.
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Why is it important?
Road mitigation decisions are typically made at the discretion of transportation departments who are mandated to address motorist safety. Therefore, prioritization of road sections for mitigation currently focuses on identification of road sections with a high number of AVCs. Our results demonstrated poor spatial alignment between road sections of high motorist safety risk and those of high value for wildlife connectivity. Transportation planning would benefit from integrating motorist safety risk and wildlife management needs to prioritize road mitigation along roadways.
Perspectives
When most people think about roads and wildlife it is about the risk of striking an animal while driving. In Alberta we share the landscape with large mammals (pronghorn, elk, moose, bighorn sheep, grizzly bears, black bears) but deer are the most common species involved in animal vehicle collisions. It is not a surprise that motorist safety is a priority and indeed we should address areas with high animal vehicle collisions. But what about species that are rare and sensitive to traffic volumes, who may avoid roads. Species that tend not to show up in the animal vehicle data which is driven by deer. Our project shows road sections where animal vehicle collision hotspots and connectivity values for rarer species align and road mitigation would reduce the risk of animal vehicle collisions while enabling safe passage for species of concern.
Tracy Lee
Miistakis Institute, Mount Royal University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Prioritizing human safety and multispecies connectivity across a regional road network, Conservation Science and Practice, November 2020, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/csp2.327.
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