Wildlife

How Roads Impact Wildlife – The Environmental Impact

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How Roads Impact Wildlife – The Environmental Impact

Roads have become increasingly common across our globe as people utilize them to travel to places they want to go, increasing the reliability on cars for transportation needs. These large and wide networks of roads we know today severely alter a landscape and can impact wildlife in numerous ways. As seen in my previous blog posts, roads can cause impacts to wildlife such as mortality, wildlife-vehicle collisions, and limit their movement from place to place; however, roads can also shift the population demographic of a wildlife species and become a source of pollution into the environment. Roads impacts extend well beyond the surface of the road itself, causing many ecological impacts to the environment and the wildlife within it.

Habitat Fragmentation & Alteration

Roads can cause direct mortality to wildlife, causing other factors to occur such as wildlife shifting their population demographic farther away from the road, losing vital habitat space. Roads also pose a number of indirect effects onto wildlife, such as habitat fragmentation and alteration. This is due to either wildlife not being able to cross a road due to the risks of mortality or through avoiding the road altogether, shifting their habitat farther away.

Roads also create barriers that limit the movement of wildlife, one of the main issues being barriers prohibit gene flow. An example of this was seen when a group of researchers studied the genetics in timber snakes; snakes that were blocked in their movement from roads had a much lower genetic diversity than other snakes across continuous habitat types. Along with this, the male timber snakes are known to follow pheromone trails to find mates; roads disturb this trail and make it difficult for the males to be able to find mates, affecting reproduction and survival of the species.

Wildlife being affected from habitat fragmentation and alteration are also susceptible to not being able to access specific habitats. An example of this is during dry seasons; when there is a drought occurring, road prohibit wildlife from reaching vital water sources. Roads can also prevent some wildlife from reaching nesting sites, such as turtles; these species end up laying their eggs in habitats where there is more predation, meaning their is a decreased chance of reproductive success and survival of the species.

Constructing a road also alters the habitat altogether. If a road is running through a forest, the road creates an edge habitat along the parts of the road that fringe the forest itself. This can have severe consequences for wildlife, especially birds; when an edge habitat is created, birds become more susceptible to predation. This is due to predators being able to prey on birds much easier in the edge habitat, as the forest canopy at the edge offers less protection to the birds and their nests. Other wildlife susceptible to edge habitats are turtles; some species of turtle prefer to nest along edge habitats because it is an ideal habitat for their nest. However, turtles utilizing the edge habitat are now posed to a greater risk of mortality when crossing roads, and their hatchlings could also be susceptible to this when they disperse after hatching from the nest.

Pollution

While roads can alter habitats and cause fragmentation to occur, they can also channel pollutants onto the environment. Debris from tires on the road can cause things such as a decreased amount of time to metamorphosis for the wood frog species. Salt that is used to deice roads runs off the road and into adjacent ponds that can decrease the survivorship of species such as spotted salamanders and wood frogs. Deicing salts can also change frogs behavior and decrease their performance in locomotion. Frogs are one the species that have been shown to have greater skeletal abnormalities when they are closer to roads; researchers suggest this is a result from the road contamination. This is turn affects the frogs fitness, making them potentially less adept to catch prey or elude themselves away from predators.

Roads polluting the environment extend far beyond introducing chemicals into the environment; they also introduce noise and light, which can be detrimental to wildlife as well. The noise from traffic on a road can effect species of bird, causing declines in bird populations living in proximity habitats close to the road. However, not all species of bird are equally affected, such as how birds having song frequencies similar to that of a car frequency being found as absent from habitats near roadsides. Noise from a road can also change bird species’ community composition, meaning that some species of birds are differentially excluded from a particular habitat near a road.

Along with noise polluting the environment, light can as well. Some species of wildlife rely on light to control biological activities, and this can be impacted by lights along a road. For example, robins use sunlight as a cue to begin their morning songs and can mistake lights on a road for the sun and begin their song in the middle of the night. Lights from roads can also alter flying routes for bats, as well as expose some frog species to artificial light during the night that could delay their metamorphosis time. Along with this, sea turtle hatchlings use light in order to navigate themselves to the sea and can become confused by lights on a road and go toward a road instead of the ocean; this can cause the hatchlings to die from dehydration, predators, and /or wildlife-vehicle collisions, and they will never reach the ocean. This goes for the females that nest their hatchlings as well, sometimes becoming disoriented from road lights and have a difficult time getting back to the ocean.

A final note on pollution from roads is that is can facilitate the spread of invasive species when land is cleared for a road. An example of this was seen in Australia with cane toads; these species of toad are very invasive in the continent and use roadside areas to move, causing an increase in their range as a population. Along with this, species such as fire ants may also build their mounding nests by areas cleared for roads because this is an ideal habitat for them. Roads can facilitate the invasion of invasive species, and alter or fragment a habitat; all of this impacts are detrimental to both wildlife and the land they live in.

Mitigation Strategies

There are numerous solutions and mitigation strategies being developed to help decrease the amount of harmful impacts our roads cause to wildlife. In instances where the pattern of mortality can be predicted for a specific are during a specific time of year, roads are either closed or reduced in their speed limits to decrease the rates of wildlife mortality. Another solution is creating artificial nesting sites for gravid species that need them; this can reduce species from needing to potentially cross a road, the distance they need to travel, and/or their chances of mortality.

A main issue with roads is the traffic volume on them. Though decreasing traffic volume is not very likely to be effective for a mitigation strategy, constructing alternative methods to cross a road could become more successful. For example, culverts can be used for smaller animals to allow for a safe passage under a roadway; this has been shown to be highly effective in decreasing mortality rates of wildlife. For bigger animals, overpasses can be used to cross a road; this overpass would need to have specific features of the wildlife’s environment, such as vegetation planted over it to mimic the habitat type.

There are many factors that need to be taken into consideration when ensuring wildlife can effectively and efficiently cross our road structures. We need to implement and create new ways to protect and preserve our wildlife, as well as the environment they live in. From this post, we have learned that roads not only impact wildlife through things such as mortality or vehicle collisions, but roads also create very real and severe threats to the environment that in turn affect wildlife. We as humans have a job of conserving our planet, and that includes the wildlife within it. Without the wildlife, there would not be an environment for us to destruct upon, as wildlife naturally disperse seeds, nutrients, and vital resources the environment needs to keep going.

“We are part of the environment, just as much as wild animals are. They do not seek to kill us, we seek to kill them. It’s surely our responsibility to do everything within our power to create a planet that provides a home not just for us, but for all life on Earth.” – David Attenborough.

How Roads Impact Wildlife – Anthropogenic Noise

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How Roads Impact Wildlife – Anthropogenic Noise

From the major transportation infrastructures we use everyday of our lives, from highways to simple roads through the suburbs, we as humans may not notice the effects of a vehicle driving on a road. What is not noticed enough is the amount of anthropogenic noise produced from roads and traffic, and how this in turn effects the wildlife around us. How does anthropogenic noise effect our wildlife species, and how can we resolve this issue?

Roads & Traffic – Too Noisy?

Through human development, anthropogenic noise is introduced into the environment across multiple aspects of terrestrial landscapes; this includes, but is not limited to, airports, roads, and highways. Anthropogenic noise is known as a global phenomenon in today’s world, having the potential to impact wildlife species across every continent and habitat type.

Transportation systems are one of the most pervasive sources of anthropogenic noise across every landscape, including from sources such as roads and the traffic volume associated with it. Roads are very widespread and produce an increased amount of noise; though they may seem to cover a small surface area, the ecological impacts of roads and the noise associated with them extend well beyond a road itself. Anthropogenic noise from roads affects about one fifth of landscapes in the U.S., becoming problematic for wildlife due to the noise volume produced being very loud.

Anthropogenic noise also has varying characteristics that differentiate from the sources it comes from, such as the amplitude (or loudness), frequency (or pitch), and spatial and temporal patterns of the noise; this in turn determines the impact noise has on wildlife. This noise can affect wildlife both at an individual level and at a population level.

How Anthropogenic Noise Impacts Wildlife

On an individual level, wildlife are impacted by anthropogenic noise through the acute impacts noise can cause; these effects include physiological damage, masking of communication, disruption of behavior, and startling to an individual animal. Physiological damage to an individual animal can cause the animal’s inability to hear, either by permanently damaging the auditory system causing a permanent threshold shift (PTS) in the individual’s hearing, or by temporary reductions in the animal’s hearing sensitivity, known as temporary threshold shifts (TTS).

In terms of masking an animal’s communication, this happens when an animal perceiving a sound is impacted by the background noise (i.e., anthropogenic noise) and cannot make out the acoustic communication being relayed because it is masked. If this occurs, this will ultimately cause a decrease in acoustic communication between individuals or species. Acoustic communication is used by animals to attract and have mates, distinguish territory, promote social bonding, and alert others if a predator is nearby. If anthropogenic noise masks the acoustic communication, this can have dramatic effects on reproduction and survival of a species.

Anthropogenic noise can also cause an individual animal to suffer from chronic effects, such as elevated stress levels and associated physiological responses with it; this in turn can cause long-term welfare and survival consequences from anthropogenic noise effecting an animal.

Anthropogenic noise effects wildlife at a population level through how it can range from causing things such as population decline up to a regional extinction of a species. This is especially critical for species that are threatened or endangered due to habitat loss; if a species begins to avoid even more habitats due to anthropogenic noise, their status becomes more critical and could result in possible extinction.

Wildlife species have varied responses in their tolerability to anthropogenic noise due to their altered acoustic environments. For example, when a major transportation infrastructure is placed into an environment, studies have shown that the amount of species present near the road are greatly reduced from what they were before the road was placed; this majorly due to the road itself and the associated anthropogenic noise coming from it.

Anthropogenic noise coming from roads can also mask the communication of species, as stated above, and cause a decrease in their acoustic communication and in turn effect their reproduction and survival as a whole. However, how can we as humans reduce the amount of anthropogenic noise produced from our major transportation infrastructures to reduce the impacts it has on our wildlife?

Animals to humans: Be quiet!

Future Directions for Anthropogenic Noise

Though human development and the associated anthropogenic noise are rapidly spreading in our advanced world, there may not always be a logistically, politically, or economically feasible way to eliminate or even minimize anthropogenic noise altogether. However, there is a common approach that can be used, being to set noise standards for when major transportation infrastructures are implemented in hopes to limit the level of noise being produced into the environment. This would mean that when a road or highway is implemented, the noise production can be reduced either operationally or structurally to meet the noise standards.

An example of this can be shown through how road noise can be decreased by using specific types of asphalt, though this could also cause the road’s surface to have lower durability and traction. Another solution to reduce road noise could be to implement noise barriers along a road, however, these may also cut off migration routes and enhance rather than decrease the road impacts overall. So, how do we go about decreasing the anthropogenic noise imposed onto the wildlife around us?

Most of environmentalists researching this have discussed using a single noise standard that covers all anthropogenic noise situations; however, this does not account for all species and how the anthropogenic noise impacts each individual species. Rather than using a single noise standard, there should be a set of standards established that would be based off the measurement of sensitivities for species in specific concern or in a specific habitat location or type. If this set of standards were developed, this would be that wildlife would not suffer as much from the anthropogenic noise produced from human structures, while addressing how sensitive each species is to anthropogenic noise. We as humans don’t like hearing too much background noise and having it affect us daily, causing us things such as stress or not being able to effectively communicate with others. Why should let our wildlife be susceptible to this?

How Roads Impact Wildlife – Raccoons in Our Neighborhoods

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How Roads Impact Wildlife – Raccoons in Our Neighborhoods

It’s the end to a wonderful day. You just finished cleaning up from a delicious dinner and start getting ready to take the trash from the day outside. As you walk outside to your trash barrel, you notice a pair of eyes peering out from inside the barrel. Pausing, you slowly grab your phone to turn the flashlight on, only to be met with a bandit: a raccoon! Raccoons are known as trash pandas or bandits, sneaking into people’s yards and going through their trash, only to disappear into the night. What people are not aware of is that we are attracting raccoons right into our suburban and urbanized areas. How you might ask? Read on to find out why!

Image of a raccoon standing on a tree stump.

Why Raccoons are in our Humanized Landscapes

Raccoons are very smart and intelligent creatures, seeming to be increasing in their abundance within urbanized landscapes; the question to ask is why? Why are these creatures becoming established in our urban landscapes rather than hiding in the forest where they are from? The answer to this question is one that has been discussed among wildlife biologists for years, and the reason seems to be that humans are unintentionally participating in the education of raccoons. Over the past 80 or so years, raccoons have made this astonishing surge in their populations, having their highest densities within suburban areas and slowly increasing in cities. Raccoons have well-adjusted to living with and among human beings, and this has what’s resulted in raccoons increasing domination of our humanized landscapes.

How This Issue was Established

Researching this issue lead me to Suzanne MacDonald, a biologist and psychologist from York University located in Toronto, Canada. She has been researching this issue and her work suggests that raccoons living in cities may actually be smarter than rural raccoons due to them forced to navigate man-made obstacles, such as roads. Using GPS collars to track raccoons, MacDonald found that these raccoons started to avoid major roads that crossed, almost suggesting raccoons have learned how to avoid cars. From this, it seems humans have inadvertently created a mini classroom within our cities for raccoons to learn from and become “perfect urban warriors” within human landscapes. But the question still remains, how do these creatures navigate their way into our human landscapes?

Crossing the Divide

Raccoons typically live in forested habitats that are heavily wooded with access to many trees, water, and vegetation. They make dens out of hollowed out trees or abandoned burrows made from other animals. When they search for food, they can travel up to 18 miles per day while foraging. However, over the past several decades, we’ve seen these creatures make there ways into our humanized landscapes and become successful at living quite efficiently within cities and the suburbs. The question still remains, how did raccoons make there way into these landscapes, away from their natural habitats? The answer to this question is roads; have you ever been driving down a road and noticed two glowing eyes peering out from a storm drain? More than likely, this pair of eyes belongs to a raccoon, as they use storm drains as a safety underground tunnel before crossing a road from one side to the other. Storm drains, also called culverts, were originally created for channel streams to pass under roadways. Now our wildlife creatures have found a safe and useful way to cross roads, without interacting with the traffic or cars up above. If these culverts or storm drain systems were set up on each and every road ever made, then animals would have a safe and efficient way of crossing our man-made obstacles without the repercussions of things such as mortality or vehicle collisions.

Family of raccoons in a storm drain on a roadway.

An example of this was seen on a highway in Maryland, where a researcher noticed raccoons using the storm drains for coverage and wanted to investigate why. Low and behold, other species such as reptiles and small mammals also use these storm drains to cross under roads as well, with a study being conducted showing 57 species of wildlife using all 265 culverts in Maryland. From this, road ecology researchers can now understand how drainage structures can be formed to allow for channel streams to pass under roads as well as wildlife; this will in turn help to decrease the amount of roadkill we see on out highways and roads, especially with raccoons.

Raccoons are intelligent creatures, finding ways to to stay safe and efficiently move from place to place through our drainage systems implemented in our roads. More roads need to have the features that drainage systems pose for our wildlife if we want to keep the amount of mortalities and wildlife-vehicle collisions at a decreasing rate. Wildlife are beginning to learn the ways of our man-made obstacles, and if we research how they are doing so, we can effectively ensure that the proper features of roads are in place so our wildlife are safe.

How Roads Impact Wildlife – Increased Human Exploitation & Recreation

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How Roads Impact Wildlife – Increased Human Exploitation & Recreation

The human footprint on the world is expanding more and more everyday, and people and wildlife are coming in greater contact with one another; this means that the areas humans use for activity or recreation could be simultaneously associated with the risks towards animals. Human recreation is one of the biggest exploitations to wildlife, including facets concerning public access on roads, motorized summer trails and winter trials, cross country ATV and snowmobile use trails, and/or water access trails.

Human Exploitation & Recreation on Wildlife

Wildlife experience many impacts from humans and roads in general, however, the impacts wildlife endure from human activities and disturbances can include the following: physically altering a habitat, removing vegetation or replacing native species with disturbance-tolerant non-native species, and increased noise, sight, or sound from people. Human recreation impacts wildlife through the exploitation, modification, disturbance, and pollution it imposes on the environment.

Any disturbances caused by human recreation or other activities by humans could cause wildlife species to elicit behavioral and physiological responses. These responses are usually influenced by the disturbance itself (i.e., activity type, distance away from the species, direction or movement , speed, frequency, predictability, and magnitude) and/or the location in relation to the animal itself. The type of behavioral response wildlife elicit is in the form of avoidance, habituation, or attraction; more times than not, wildlife will avoid areas where humans recreate or exploit. Examples of specific recreational activities that impact wildlife include:

  • Hunting – can alter the sex and age composition, distribution, reproduction, and behavior of wildlife
  • Viewing – can disturb wildlife through things such as close encounters, and cause changes in the animal’s energy expenditure, alter their nest or burrow site, and decrease the ability of their young to survive (i.e., animal’s will sometimes abandon their young when human’s are near because they are deemed as predators)
  • Backpacking/Hiking, etc. – can cause increased flight risk, stress, and/or displacement of wildlife
  • Boating – can alter the habitat quality or foraging quality for waterfowl species, and can also impact the quality of the water wildlife are exposed to
  • RMV’s – can cause wildlife to redistribute from disturbances such as flight or stress

How Human Recreation & Exploitation Stems from Roads

The impacts described above on how wildlife endure effects from human recreation and exploitation are accessible from one of two places: roads or trails. Public access roads disrupt the wildlife’s habitat continuity to one extent or another, usually dividing a big area of habitat into smaller patches. These types of roads can also inhibit movement for animals migrating, enhance linear openings of roads that are detrimental to wildlife, and cause habitat or forest fragmentation.

Motorized summer or winter trails for ATV’s, snowmobiles, RMV’s, or even water access trails, have negative effects to wildlife, including the following: physically altering the habitat area, removing vegetation, replacing native vegetation with non-native vegetation, increased noise disturbances, reduced habitat security, and sometimes resulting in direct injury and/or mortality to the wildlife. All of these impacts to wildlife species result from any form of human recreation and/or exploitation; yet, how can we as humans make the environment a better place for wildlife to live and thrive in?

Solutions to Human Recreation & Exploitation

A current solution being used to stop the human recreation and exploitation along motorized recreational trails is to identify the standard of the forest (i.e., low standard meaning there is little to no quality left; high standard meaning there is much quality) and deciding if the trail should remain opened or closed. This is dependent on local and national level ownerships of land, and whether or not the wildlife in the area being considered will benefit from the trail closing or not be affected whether it’s open or not.

Other solutions to the issue of human recreation and exploitation from roads and trails would be to have maintenance and public information available to people who utilize human recreation areas, roads, and trails; this would help improve the public’s knowledge of where it is okay and not okay to recreate. From these solutions, road related impacts to wildlife could considerably decrease due to more people taking the necessary precautions to protect an area of land and the wildlife within it.

An example of how to humanly recreate within an environmental area that wildlife are home to could be to follow the indicated trails when going on a hike instead of detouring away from the trail. Another example could be to take the time to research the area you’re going to be recreating in and understanding the precautions needed to ensure wildlife are not harmed and/or disturbed. Recreation should be utilized, to hike, explore, and be apart of different areas of nature, but should be done so in a safe and cautionary way to protect and not exploit upon the wildlife within our environment.

How Roads Impact Wildlife – Road Avoidance

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How Roads Impact Wildlife – Road Avoidance

Roads have become integrated into our world and are a central function to human society. When barriers are placed around roads, this in turn affect wildlife’s ability to move as well as the trajectory and evolution of wildlife populations; this is known as the barrier effect as wildlife learn to avoid roads with barriers around them. However, how exactly do barriers impact our wildlife and cause them to avoid roads?

The Barrier Effect

Roads can impose a barrier effect to occur in wildlife populations, causing wildlife to decrease their dispersal rates and limit the amount of demographic rescue and gene flow within a population; this in turn increases the species potential of going extinct. The barrier effect is related to the impacts of roads and affects several wildlife populations; it’s usually caused by behavioral responses to roads (i.e., road avoidance), emissions associated with the road (i.e., traffic-emissions avoidance), and/or the circular activity of vehicles on a road (i.e., vehicle avoidance).

Road avoidance by wildlife is usually dependent on the surface material of the road itself or the clearance of vegetation near the road. Traffic-emission avoidance is dependent upon the long-ranging disturbances coming from roads, such as dust, light, vibrations, and/or noise. Vehicle avoidance is dependent upon the behavioral response of a species of wildlife that has the movement and cognitive capacity to avoid vehicles on a road. All of these types of avoidances are drivers of the barrier effect and cause wildlife to avoid roads.

An example of the barrier effect can be seen with the federal plans to complete a continuous wall along the U.S.-Mexico boundary. Implementing this wall would threaten the existence of multiple plant and animal species, as many species migrate terrestrially between the U.S. and Mexico. Though this example is not of a road itself, it emphasizes why wildlife populations have road avoidance due to barrier effects.

Barriers, whether along a road or between countries, present physical limitations to wildlife, preventing and/or discouraging wildlife from accessing vital resources such as food, water, mates, or disrupt annual or seasonal migration and dispersal routes. These barriers, whether border walls or for transportation infrastructures, not only affect wildlife, but also cause habitat fragmentation, soil erosion, changes in fire regimes, and altering of hydrological processes through causing floods. From this, it seems that each species of wildlife has a how and why to the reasons for road avoidance, however, this is an issue that needs future considerations and research needs.

Future Considerations & Research Needs

Behaviors vary across all species of wildlife, however, with the use of basic ecology, predictions can be made for the primary response wildlife populations will have to roads and therefore provide increased predictive ability about how barrier effects of roads are perceived as a risk to wildlife. This is a solution for researchers concerned about this issue, as they can conduct studies on specific species of wildlife or a specific road to understand why the animals in that area are avoiding it.

Other solutions can include the need to identify species surrounding the road area, the habitats and ecological resources at risk from the barrier being constructed, designing barriers to have maximum wildlife permeability wherever possible, and/or restoring habitats when the harm to the environment is inevitable. Though we may be a long ways away from finding a solution to wildlife displaying barrier effects from road avoidance, researchers can still assess the primary responses of wildlife species to better understand what the causes of road avoidance may truly be, and help to construct better roadway systems for both wildlife and the environment in the future.

The barrier effect is a very real and pervasive threat to wildlife, as it may cause them to avoid certain areas of vital habitat key to their survival all because of our major transportation infrastructures deterring them away. Collaboration from researchers based in wildlife biology, ecology, and even road ecology could all work together to implement the solutions listed above so our roads no longer deter our wildlife from their native land.

How Roads Impact Wildlife – Indirect Effects to Our Wildlife Species

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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.

How Roads Impact Wildlife – Habitat Fragmentation

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How Roads Impact Wildlife – Habitat Fragmentation

Driving down a long and windy road can sometimes feel like the best thing in the world: music cranked all the way up, windows down and the sun shining down on the world with the hills and trees lining the fields in the distance. This is a beautiful sight especially during the summertime, however, what about the the part of the land you’re driving on, now covered with tar? Most people don’t think of this when they’re driving, but roads have a huge ecological impact to the land they are implemented in; this in turn effects the environment and the wildlife living within the habitats of the land. Habitat fragmentation is a major issue when it comes to placing major transportation infrastructures (i.e., roads, highways, interstates, railroads, etc.) into the environment, but how do they exactly affect the land and the wildlife within it?

Impacts to the Land & Wildlife

Looking at the image above, what do you see? Roads cause a lot of fragmentation in the land, as you can see from the small patches of habitat in between the sections of crossing roads. A literature review I recently read about habitat fragmentation gave prime examples of how the land and wildlife are impacted by this. Habitat fragmentation is one the largest and most single pervasive threat to biodiversity across the world; it is the destruction of habitat, as well as altering and/or fragmenting large areas of habitat into smaller patches. Roads play a major role in habitat fragmentation because they cause a large dividing of the landscape into smaller patches of habitat; roads also cause interior habitat areas to turn into edge habitats, meaning areas in the interior of the land had characteristics unchanged and have now become altered and have edges that do not resemble what the habitat used to look like or be. As of 2003, 3.9 million miles of roads have caused direct habitat loss to our landscape in the U.S., and this has only increased with the number roads we currently have in the U.S. In terms of how habitat fragmentation affects wildlife populations and species, fragmentation forms the landscape to have altered habitats or areas that have developed fundamentally differently due to being shaped from natural disturbances, such as major transportation infrastructures; this is turn causes wildlife populations and species to adapt to these altered habitats over time.

These impacts of habitat fragmentation from roads have adverse effects to wildlife, and include, but are not limited to, the following: increased isolation of populations and species causing adverse effects on genetics and diversity, changes to vegetation the animals forage or feed on, changes to the quality and quantity of food, changes in temperature, changes in the flow of energy and nutrients, changes to available shelter or cover, increased edge effects that could cause species that do not normally interact to now interact, and increased opportunities for humans to exploit resources or wildlife (i.e., poaching). All of these impacts occur from having a road placed in the middle of a landscape, causing a chain reaction to occur that creates habitat fragmentation to loss of wildlife populations and species. How can this issue be solved so we don’t lose more habitat and wildlife as new roads are created?

Solutions to Habitat Fragmentation

Now that we’ve discussed the issues roads cause to wildlife, from mortality and collisions in my early blog posts to how habitat fragmentation impacts wildlife as well, what are the solutions to help reduce the effects habitat fragmentation has on the land and wildlife? The good news is not all species are necessarily affected by it; species that do not travel very far can only be truly effected if the area they’re in is disturbed, and species that have good dispersal are only affected by the amount of habitat they have access to. However, this does not mean all wildlife are safe from roads causing habitat fragmentation, or habitat fragmentation in general. I was able to find an article discussing the practical considerations of how to address the issue of habitat fragmentation. The main issue of habitat fragmentation is that it is causing wildlife populations and species to decrease in size and amount, causing wildlife to become isolated and not be able to reproduce to keep their populations growing. Barriers such as guardrails or even buildings cause limitations to wildlife movement as well; habitat fragmentation is pushed even further when a road is placed and then there are barriers placed around the road, causing the wildlife to find new corridors to their habitats. One of the main solutions to this issue is utilizing urban green-space to reduce habitat fragmentation and keep intact the connectivity between habitat patches as development continues into the future. In existing urban areas, such as landscapes having a lot of roads or other major infrastructures, green-spaces can be utilized by implementing things such as footpaths, canals and rivers to offer more corridors for wildlife to access instead of using roads to move from habitat to habitat. In urban areas that are becoming newly developed, habitat fragmentation can be counteracted by protecting the already existing patches of habitat that are high in quality and species diversity; this would in turn allow wildlife to still have access to a valuable piece of habitat and allow for the wildlife to not be limited in their movement.

Another great solution to this issue is using habitat network maps; this is a leading development by Forest Research where they develop and apply landscape ecology techniques to combat against fragmentation. Groups of people within this research organization that are concerned with fragmentation have created habitat network maps to evaluate the connectivity of existing wildlife patches and target where to implement new patches when planning urban development. These solutions to the issue of habitat fragmentation will not only help reduce the effects roads have wildlife, but also wildlife increased movement from habitat to habitat and give them more corridors to access as well. The more wildlife movement there is, the more genetic and species diversity will be seen, causing wildlife populations and species to increase rather than decrease. Roads pose serious and adverse effects to wildlife, especially when they’re habitat becomes fragmented an destroyed in the process of implementing the road. If road ecology researchers took more of this into consideration when planning to implement roads in the least destructible way possible, this would in turn benefit the landscape and wildlife in the process.

How Roads Impact Wildlife – Deer in the Headlights

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How Roads Impact Wildlife – Deer in the Headlights

On Friday, May 29th, I was perusing my Facebook newsfeed when I came across this post: A fawn hit by a car that was coming down an off-ramp. This always hits me hard because I work with these wildlife species that are so susceptible to cars and roadways, most of the time becoming susceptible to mortality as well. The next day, Saturday, May 30th, I was driving up Interstate 95 in between Massachusetts and New Hampshire and saw not one, not two, but THREE deer dead along the sides of the highway. One of the deer I saw hit was when I was coming through the New Hampshire tolls after the Hampton Beach exit, and was stuck incbetween the barriers built to separate the EZ-Pass and Cash Only lanes. This is very disheartening and sad to see how the wildlife around us are so easily susceptible to the major transportation infrastructures we build for our transportation needs. So, by now most of you might be asking yourselves, how do we go about solving this issue?

What to Do When You See a Deer

What would you do you saw this while driving?

What happens when most people see a deer in the middle of a roadway system (i.e., road, highway, interstate, etc.) is they don’t know what to do. Most people end up swerving their car and injuring themselves, or having the front fender of their car collide with the deer. What people should become more aware of is the steps to take if you’re put in the situation where you’re about to hit a deer on the road, such as the ones provided in this video I found and supported by State Farm Auto Insurance Company. The most important step is to always buckle-up; wearing your seatbelt will ensure that if you do end up hitting a deer, or anything that has a hard impact to your vehicle, you’ll be protected and not suffer as much of the significant injuries as you would if you weren’t wearing your seatbelt. Often times what happens when a person is encountered with a deer on the road is there is not a lot of time to react; you’re put into an almost state of shock and you need to act faster than you can think, or so it seems. Though it may seem inevitable to hit the deer, there are steps you can take to prevent this from occurring.

The Steps You Can Take

The first and probably most obvious step when you encounter a deer on the road is to slow down your vehicle; do not try and outrun a deer with your vehicle and instead slow your vehicle down so the deer has a chance to cross. This will also help other cars notice something is going on by seeing your break lights illuminated. The second thing you can do is turn on your high beams when you’re driving at night; this will ensure your illuminating as much of the road as you can to see clearly. If you do encounter a deer and your high beams are on, be sure to slow down your vehicle and also switch off your high beams to your low beam lights; bright illuminating lights can blind an animal, and switching to low beam lights will allow the animal to move safely out of the way of the vehicle. Another thing to do when driving is to scan the sides of the road and the road itself, especially if you’re driving through an area that has forested or woodsy areas; scanning will allow you to see a deer before it seems too late, and if you do see a deer, be hesitant and cautious before continuing to drive as there could be more deers following and coming to cross the road as well. Also ensure that if you do see a deer and end up needing to break or stop your vehicle that you do so safely and cautiously as this could also cause a chain reaction to the cars coming behind you on the road. Another thing to keep in mind about deer is that they’re usually seen at the times around dusk and dawn; though they could come out at any point during the day and a person should always be scanning the road, driving extra cautiously during these times and following the steps given from this post and the video will ensure you’re doing absolutely everything you can to protect deer, as well as other wildlife species, from being susceptible to a vehicle collision and adding to the number of wildlife mortalities that continue to grow.

A last and very important step to add to this is to make sure you do not swerve your vehicle; swerving your vehicle could cause damage to other drivers if your swerving into another lane of traffic, or cause you to hit something else, such as a guardrail or tree. If you do hit a deer by chance because there was absolutely no time to stop your vehicle from doing so, the video also ensures that the windshield is strong enough to withstand the impact of the deer hitting it. Though sometimes it may be inevitable to hit a deer in the road because there is only so much time between your vehicle and the deer, these are important, effective, and efficient steps that will help reduce the number of deer we see lying on the side of roads and hopefully create more awareness of what can be done to help stop wildlife being susceptible to our major transportation infrastructures.

How Roads Impact Wildlife – Turtles Finding Nesting Sites Across Our Roads

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How Roads Impact Wildlife – Turtles Finding Nesting Sites Across Our Roads

As warmer weather approaches for the summer season, it always seems to wake everyone and everything up in the world to a brighter and cheerier day. This is a time too where people want to be out and about in their cars with the windows rolled down, sunroof open, and music ready for cruisin’. Picture this as your driving around during this time of the season: As your driving down your street on your way to go on your errands, you notice on the side of the road a turtle who’s attempting to cross the street. You don’t think much of it, just another animal crossing a road, and pass by it. That’s when all of sudden you see in your rear-view mirror the car behind you run it over. This may be a morbid scene to think about, however, this was the first incident I saw with a wildlife animal that made me realize the dangers roads pose for them and how we need to act to help.

Reading Between the Lines

As you read the title of this post, you’re probably thinking why do turtles matter, how are they so susceptible to roads, etc. This post was inspired from a Facebook post I saw scrolling through my newsfeed about a turtle being purposefully run over, and made me realize the awareness that needs to be spread about how susceptible turtles are to roads, especially as the summer season approaches. The Facebook post set the scene of a woman about to get out of her car and help a turtle cross the road, however, as she gets out of her car, someone comes out of nowhere and swerves to hit the turtle before taking off. Hearing the crunch of it’s shell, the woman soon realizes that the turtle is probably either paralyzed or dead now. Turtles take between six to ten years to reach full maturity, and many cross roads to find nesting sites for their eggs. Anywhere between two to eleven eggs can be laid, but most lay five to six, with the chance of 90% becoming susceptible to predators when they are eggs, and hatchlings even more so.

Importance of Recognition & Awareness

Turtles being hit by vehicles on a road is a very significant source of mortality for this species, mainly due to most turtles being hit are pregnant females looking for a nesting site. Turtles are even removed from the wild, meaning there’s an even more reduced chance for the species to successfully reproduce due to reducing the ability of the population to maintain itself in the wild. There needs to be more awareness from the human population when it comes to recognizing and seeing a wild animal on the road; turtles are very low to the ground when they are seen, and at times it can be difficult to see one when driving in a vehicle. However, when driving, be sure to take some time to scope out the area in front of you that your vehicle will be driving on next, especially the edges of the road; this may not stop the issue of turtles being hit, but it will help resolve this issue as people become more aware of the natural environment around their urbanized settings. If you see a turtle, you can either stop your car to make sure it crosses safely, or utilize yourself to ensure it crosses safely, too.

How to Help

Speaking for myself personally, I live in a rural area where there are a lot of forested areas filled with wildlife. Turtles are something I see often attempting to cross the road, especially as the weather gets warmer and the summer season approaches; this is when most turtle-vehicle collisions occur. When a turtle is seen in the road, there is one main thing that can be done to help save the turtle from being crushed under a vehicle: help it cross the road. This incident actually happened to me this week when I left my house to go on errands; I was driving on my road when I saw a turtle sun-basking in the middle of the road. This is what I did and usually do when I see a turtle in the road: I’ll park my car either on the side of the road or in front of the turtle (i.e., depends on the type of road I’m on and where the turtle is in relation to me and the road) with my hazards on to warn people something is going on. I’ll get out of my car and pick up the turtle by sandwiching it – basically performed just as it sounds, you place either hand on each side of the shell and encircle your thumbs under the bottom of the shell and the other four fingers on top of the shell – and then bringing it to whatever side of the road it was facing to go to. Usually if there’s a body of water nearby, such as a pond, river, or stream, I’ll bring the turtle there as well. Though this technique may not ensure that the turtle is not hit by a car – it could just as easily decide to turn around and cross the road again – it does ensure that you helped a turtle in need by preventing it from getting hit by a vehicle as much as you could. People may think interfering with wildlife in this way is not appropriate, as we are told to stay away from wildlife and not interact. However, being someone who is very familiar with wildlife rehabilitation and management, I can say for certain that helping a turtle cross a road is something that will in turn help increase the turtle population in the long-run and make for less turtles to be harmed on our roads. Helping wildlife out when we see they are in danger or in need is just one thing we can do to protect them, especially to save a turtle from being hit by a vehicle.

How Roads Impact Wildlife – Considering Already Existing Roads vs. New Roads

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How Roads Impact Wildlife – Considering Already Existing Roads vs. New Roads

Roadways act as barriers to the movement of wildlife populations as they attempt to move from habitat to habitat, sometimes making them susceptible to things such as mortality, wildlife-vehicle collisions, fragmenting and/or destructing habitat, interrupting ecological processes, and increasing pollution and erosion. To find solutions to the issues roadways pose, one thing researchers in road ecology have found is debating whether to keep the number of road’s already existing and expand off of those, or to keep increasing the number of roads that already exist by implementing new ones. From your perspective, what would you do?

In the Real-World

Researchers studying road ecology and attempting to understand the impacts roads have on the adjacent environment or wildlife populations have used various methods to understand how mortality impacts wildlife populations through road systems, such as through increasing the number of roadways or traffic volume that already exists. Studies conducted on this found increasing traffic volume on existing roads have a lower impact on wildlife than creating new roads (Rhodes et al, 2014). When measuring levels of traffic volume, researchers assess impacts to wildlife; this can be done by accounting for risks towards wildlife populations along with various species that could be affected. Researchers investigating this were able to determine that traffic volume creates very substantial and negative consequences for wildlife, even as traffic increases (Charry & Jones, 2009).

What This Means for Wildlife & the Environment

When researchers in road ecology are developing plans to either extend an already existing road or implement a new road into the environment, there are a lot of considerations to be factored: how the road will be implemented to cause the least destruction possible, how the road once implemented will impact the surrounding environment (i.e., roads fragment the edges of an environment, causing an edge effect to occur), how the road will cause wildlife to potentially use it for crossing, etc. These factors are important, and from the studies described above attempting to understand this more, it is seen that extending already existing roads is much more beneficial to wildlife and the environment than creating new roads. Traffic volume is another consideration that goes into the plans of road ecology; the amount of traffic on a road can create very substantial and negative consequences for wildlife, such as increased wildlife mortality or wildlife-vehicle collisions on the road. However, when considering the pros and cons between the two options – either implementing a new road or extending an already existing one – the latter seems to have less consequences for the land and the wildlife surrounding the road. Road ecology should be broadened to consider how extending already existing roads rather than creating new roads would benefit wildlife and the environment as a whole, such as less instances of mortality and vehicle collisions while also increasing ecological processing in the environment overall. Road ecology could also broaden itself by implementing solutions into new road plans to create a new road that is wildlife and environmentally friendly, such as the ecopassages discussed in the previous post; this in turn would help the issues of traffic volume by giving wildlife an alternative to cross the road. Wildlife and the environment deserve to be tread upon lightly with care and compassion, as we have little left of what we started with. Roads are helpful for humanity to get us where we need to go, but in the end, is it worth sacrificing the land we have left for new roads, or leave the land for the wildlife to use and for the purposes of producing more of the natural environment and resources needed in the world today?

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