Wildlife Corridors

Practical Solution

The “How To”

Penn State University offers a general introduction to wildlife corridors that explains the rationale and ecosystem need. One of the most frequently cited examples of wildlife corridors and wildlife crossings is the Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies. A similar project was established in 2010 in Florida, the Florida Wildlife Corridor. A relevant local example is the Middle Mississippi River National Wildlife Refuge, which incorporates aspects of a wildlife refuge/preserve, a riparian corridor, and a wildlife corridor. Typically these corridors are on a very large regional scope. A single individual municipality would not likely undertake the establishment of a wildlife corridor. However, one locally specific element is the use of wildlife crossings.

The Indiana Division of Fish & Wildlife provides a fact sheet on strategies to implement wildlife corridors. The US Forest Service offers a Wildlife Crossings Toolkit. In partnership with ten U.S. States and their departments of transportation, as well as the Federal Highway Administration, the National Park Service, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and the USDA Forest Division, a non-profit named The Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project developed a thorough, comprehensive, and illustrative user's guide to developing safe highway crossings. Finally, and more broadly, the Federal Highway Administration offers web resources and manual on an ecosystem approach to designing infrastructure projects.

Dollars & Cents

Cost Benefits

The Arizona Department of Transportation's Wildlife Linkages Assessment indicated that more than 200 people die and nearly 30,000 are injured every year due to highway vehicle collisions with animals. These accidents cause more than $1 billion in related property damage. Most people consider the damage and impact to the vehicle, the driver, their passengers, and related costs. However, the impact often includes major delays related to lane closures and the dispatching of public safety responders such as the state highway patrol and emergency evacuation helicopters - such collisions impact the transportation corridor as a whole. Furthermore, the Western Transportation Institute, housed at Montana State University, conducted research and published a study that demonstrated the substantial economic and cost benefit impacts associated with reducing highway collisions.

Implementation Costs to Local Government

As wildlife corridors are essentially projects of land conservation and even civic infrastructure construction (i.e. crossings over interstates), they will typically be expensive, even stretching into the millions of dollars. That said, as noted within this tool, wildlife corridors are not projects for an individual municipality. Furthermore, they are most effective when blended into existing and planned transportation and land use decision-making. As projects and construction moves forward, cities and counties can work regionally to ensure wildlife corridors are a part of those larger projects.

Measuring Success

To fully assess the success of a wildlife corridor, an analysis of the area would need to include reductions in vehicle accidents, as well as increased animal population migration. These studies tend to be complex scientific investigations. One such review was conducted in partnership with nearly a dozen federal, state, university, and non-profit agencies titled Washington Landscapes Connected Project: Statewide Analysis. An executive summary is also available.