Wildlife Crossings Are Becoming More Common in Highway Expansion Projects in North America
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Report Title Table of Contents TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Contents ............................................................................................................ iii List of Tables ................................................................................................................... v List of Figures .................................................................................................................. vi Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................... 1 1.1. Background ........................................................................................................ 1 1.2. Justification ........................................................................................................ 2 1.3. Objectives .......................................................................................................... 5 1.4. Organization ....................................................................................................... 6 Chapter 2. INTERSECTIONS .................................................................................... 9 2.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................ 9 2.2. The ecology of road corridors ........................................................................... 10 2.3. Impacts of roads on wildlife populations ........................................................... 11 2.3.1. Change in habitat ...................................................................................... 11 2.3.2. Change in wildlife distribution .................................................................... 13 2.4. Road-related mortality vs. barrier effects ......................................................... 16 Chapter 3. PLANNING & PLACEMENT ................................................................... 21 3.1. Introduction ...................................................................................................... 21 3.2. Starting out ....................................................................................................... 21 3.3. Scaled habitat connectivity planning ................................................................ 23 3.3.1. Project-level approaches ........................................................................... 23 3.3.2. Systems-level or landscape-level approaches ........................................... 24 3.4. Planning resources .......................................................................................... 28 3.4.1. Maps and data ........................................................................................... 28 3.4.2. GIS layers .................................................................................................. 31 3.4.3. How to site wildlife crossings ..................................................................... 31 3.5. Field data ......................................................................................................... 31 3.5.1. GIS models ................................................................................................ 34 3.5.2. No data ...................................................................................................... 35 Chapter 4. DESIGN ................................................................................................. 41 4.1. Introduction ...................................................................................................... 41 4.2. Function of wildlife crossings and associated measures .................................. 42 Report Title Table of Contents 4.3. Spacing of wildlife crossings ............................................................................ 44 4.4. Guidelines for the selection of wildlife crossings .............................................. 46 4.4.1. Wildlife crossing design types (Appendix 3, Hot Sheets 1-11) ................... 47 4.4.2. Wildlife habitat connectivity potential ......................................................... 49 4.4.3. Topography ............................................................................................... 53 4.5. Wildlife species groups and crossing structure classification ........................... 54 4.5.1. Species groups .......................................................................................... 54 4.6. Design and dimensions .................................................................................... 55 4.6.1. General design specifications for wildlife species ...................................... 55 4.6.2. Specific design of wildlife crossings and adjacent habitat.......................... 60 4.6.3. Hot Sheets 1-11 – Wildlife crossing prescriptions (Appendix 3) ................ 62 4.6.4. Hot Sheets 12-14 – Fencing and gate guidelines (Appendix 3) ................. 62 Chapter 5. MONITORING ........................................................................................ 67 5.1. Conservation Value of Wildlife Crossings ........................................................ 67 5.2. An Approach for Monitoring Impacts ................................................................ 70 5.3. Monitoring and Assessment Guidelines ........................................................... 70 5.4. Setting Monitoring and Performance Targets ................................................... 72 5.4.1. Developing Performance Targets – Who Defines Them? .......................... 72 5.4.2. Reliably Detecting Change in Target Parameters ...................................... 72 5.4.3. Developing Consensus-Based Performance Targets ................................ 72 5.5. Focal species ................................................................................................... 73 5.6. Monitoring techniques ...................................................................................... 75 5.7. Study Designs to Measure Performance .......................................................... 80 5.7.1. Inferential Strength .................................................................................... 80 5.7.2. Types of Study Design and Resulting Inferential Strength ........................ 80 5.8. Adaptive management ..................................................................................... 81 Report Title List of Tables LIST OF TABLES Table 3-1: Data layers and maps for planning wildlife connectivity and crossing mitigation. .... 29 Table 4-1: Average spacing interval per mile between wildlife crossings designed for large mammals at existing and planned transportation projects. ................................................... 47 Table 4-2: General guidelines for minimum and recommended dimensions of wildlife overpass designs................................................................................................................................... 56 Table 4-3: General guidelines for minimum and recommended dimensions of wildlife underpass designs................................................................................................................................... 57 Table 4-4: Suitability of wildlife crossing design types from hot sheets 1-11 for distinct wildlife species and taxa..................................................................................................................... 64 Table 5-1: Levels of conservation value for wildlife crossing systems as measured by ecosystem function achieved, level of biological organization targeted, type of connectivity potential, and cost and duration of research required to evaluate status. .............................................. 69 Table 5-2: Guide to selecting focal species based on monitoring criteria and ecosystem context. ............................................................................................................................................... 73 Table 5-3: Summary of available monitoring methods, the appropriate time to employ them (pre- or post-construction), potential target species, and cost estimates for conducting wildlife monitoring. See Appendix 5 for detailed description of each monitoring method (From Clevenger et al. 2008). .......................................................................................................... 76 Report Title List of Figures LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1-1: Accidents with wildlife in rural and suburban areas are becoming a major safety concern for motorist and transportation agencies (credit: John Nordgren). ........................... 2 Figure 1-2: Wildlife crossings are becoming more common in highway expansion projects in North America. An example is the Greenway Landbridge on Interstate 75 in Marion County, Florida (Credit: Google Earth). ................................................................................. 3 Figure 2-1: The highway system in the United States is used by more than 200 million vehicles and covers more than 6.2 million kilometers (Credit: Tony Clevenger). ............................. 10 Figure 2-2: Increasing road density fragments habitat into smaller patches and creates a disproportionate amount of edge habitat (adapted from Iuell 2005). ................................... 12 Figure 2-3: Barrier effects on populations: (A) A metapopulation consists of a network of local subpopulations that may vary in size and local dynamics but are linked to each other through dispersal. (B) Road construction causes a disturbance