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Making Roads Safer for Wildlife and People
Reconnecting habitats to create a seamless “wildway”
© cmh2315fl on Flickr
Roads can get people where they need to go. But they often run right through wildlife habitat, creating a deadly hazard for animals on the move. Liz Hilllard, who’s the Senior Wildlife Biologist for Wildlands Network, says roadkill takes a huge toll on birds and other animals every year. Wildlands Network helps transportation agencies create wildlife-friendly designs and build animal-centric bridges and tunnels for their safe crossing. The goal is to create a connected landscape that Liz and her colleagues call a wildway.
BirdNote®
Making Roads Safer for Wildlife and People
This is BirdNote.
[Cliff Swallow calls]
[Passing cars]
Roads can get people where they need to go. But they often run right through wildlife habitat, creating a deadly hazard for animals on the move. Liz Hilllard, who’s the Senior Wildlife Biologist for Wildlands Network, says roadkill takes a huge toll every year.
Liz Hillard: The numbers are absolutely staggering. It's estimated that tens of millions of birds, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals are killed per year on U.S. roadways. And for birds specifically, a recent study just estimated that between 89 million and 340 million birds die annually in vehicle collisions on U.S. roads.
[Cliff Swallow calls]
Beyond that, roads also separate animals from mates and make it harder to get to food. Wildlands Network helps transportation agencies create wildlife-friendly designs and build animal-centric bridges and tunnels for their safe crossing.
This cuts down on car accidents for people, too. And enough of these crossings helps reconnect habitats so they once again form a seamless landscape that Liz and her colleagues call a wildway.
Liz Hillard: What I'd really like to see is that this is just mandated. Anytime you're building a road, anytime you have a road project, we need to consider that a wildlife mitigation tool or solution needs to be put in place there.
Learn more about how researchers are rethinking roads to make them safer for
wildlife and people on a special season of the Bring Birds Back Podcast. Listen in your favorite podcast app or at BirdNote dot org. I’m Marcus Rosten.
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Producer: Mark Bramhill
Managing Editor: Jazzi Johnson
Managing Producer: Conor Gearin
Content Director: Jonese Franklin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Cliff Swallow ML105454051 recorded by Chris Wood.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2024 BirdNote February 2024
Narrator: Marcus Rosten
ID# PodBBB-30-2024-02-07 PodBBB-30
Reference:
https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jwmg.721
Marcus Rosten
NarratorSights & Sounds
