Roads impact wildlife in a variety of ways, as seen through my many blog posts concerning this topic and issue. However, the one major thing I have not yet discussed about how roads impact wildlife is exactly what happens to our wildlife in terms of their diversity and size. Roads can cause a chain effect of reactions to occur in the environment, including diminishing species one by one, gradually decreasing the size of their population.
Wildlife are Gradually Disappearing
Major transportation infrastructures (i.e., roads, railways, and canals) are impacting our wildlife across an array of linear landscapes, making wildlife become disproportionate to the area of habitat they occupy. As we know, roads impose an array of impacts to wildlife, including wildlife mortality, wildlife-vehicle collisions, and limited movement from habitat to habitat. However, what is of major concern is the indirect effects roads cause to our wildlife populations, such as reduced access to habitat due to road avoidance or human exploitation. The indirect effects are the ones of major concern, especially those occurring from bigger transportation infrastructures such as highways. Highways present more serious and harmful threats to wildlife and impact a much larger range of wildlife species, presenting impassable barriers for species to move around their environment. The major concerns of highways, and transportation infrastructures in general, and their indirect effects include, but are not limited to, direct loss of habitat, degradation of habitat quality, road avoidance, and human exploitation.
The Indirect Effects
Direct loss of habitat is one of the indirect effects wildlife experience from our roads and highways. Construction of major transportation infrastructures changes the value of the habitat within the landscape. Areas that used to flourish in the environment that are now covered by pavement, rails, or travel lanes with dirt and/or gravel are now vastly diminished to be used by wildlife as habitat. Transportation infrastructures also cause the quality of a habitat to degrade, causing things such as storm water discharge, alterations in stream hydrology, air emissions, and invasive plant species to occur; this can degrade a habitat not just where the transportation infrastructure is placed, but several hundred meters or even miles away from the road itself.
Due to roads running through wildlife habitat or landscapes wildlife use, wildlife become accustomed to avoid roads. Some species of wildlife will avoid areas adjacent or close to highways or roads due to the amount of noise and/or human activity associated with roads in general. Avoiding areas near roads can cause wildlife to be restricted in their ability to move around in their environment, limit the resources they can access, and limit the amount of food they are able to forage for. Roads are also associated with human activity to wildlife, which means increased human exploitation in these areas; roads increase the access for humans to hunt or poach in the environment. This effect can potentially cause wildlife populations near roadway areas to be vastly reduced, leading to wildlife becoming more road avoidant in the future. How can these indirect effects to wildlife from roads be resolved, even just a little, to help our species of the earth?
The Solution to the Indirect Effects
Based off an article I found about this issue imposed onto our wildlife, there are already progressions being made with resolutions to the issue of indirect effects from road systems. One solution is to foster a greater appreciation for the issues caused by highways and railways; this is a challenge currently because it emphasizes the understanding people need to have for the scope and complexity transportation infrastructures pose on wildlife. The issue is sometimes too often viewed as incidental to the animal rather than a threat to wildlife populations. Wildlife must be able to move throughout their landscapes as it is one of the most important ecological processes that needs to be maintained for ecosystems to stay intact over time. Being able to foster an appreciation for this issue is important, as it could lead to appropriate planning and mitigation when roads are being constructed to prevent long-term degradation of wildlife populations and their habitats.
Another solution to this issue to be able to analyze the landscape’s connectivity zones; what this means is when a road is being planned for construction, comprehensive efforts must be taken to acknowledge and leave be the areas in the landscape that are deemed important travel corridors or connections for wildlife between significant habitat areas. If these steps are taken, planning for new transportation infrastructures can be more effectively and efficiently focused on how to minimize and mitigate the impacts to critical areas wildlife use. Though these solutions are still in the making, the causes of indirect effects from roads onto wildlife is an important topic that needs to be explored so we still have the wildlife we love and see all over the world.
