West-Wide Study to Identify Important Highway Locations for Wildlife Crossings

Abstract

Wildlife-vehicle collisions (WVCs), reduced ecological connectivity, and associated impacts to wildlife and humans are widespread problems across road networks, but mitigation measures like wildlife crossings1 that can address those problems are often considered expensive. This effort aims to support transportation agencies, wildlife agencies and other decision-makers by identifying important road segments where cost-effective wildlife crossings can be deployed to address motorist safety, ecological connectivity and other conservation values across the eleven U.S. western conterminous states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.