Wildlife-vehicle collisions (WVC) can result in property damage, injury and death to drivers. WVC can similarly cause wildlife injury and mortality, genetic fragmentation and other population impacts. State departments of transportation evaluating the need to reduce WVC use evidence of WVC and other data to inform mitigation decisions. Mitigation infrastructure, such as wildlife crossings with exclusion fencing, are effective measures for reducing WVC. Yet, states generally lack consistent  econometrics for evaluating the benefits of reducing WVC relative to the costs of mitigation.

Landscape linkages are hypothetical objects developed in geographic information systems (GIS) proposed to connect areas of habitat in fragmented landscapes. Although there are specific places and species (primarily ungulates) where hypothetical linkages represent where wildlife move, for the majority of places and species there is very little evidence that these GIS objects represent an ecological reality. Assuming they were used by organisms in nature, linkages could be an important tool for the maintenance of viable wildlife populations and biodiversity conservation.

Wildlife-vehicle collisions (WVC) can result in property damage, injury and death to drivers. WVC can similarly cause wildlife injury and mortality, as well as genetic fragmentation and other population impacts. State departments of transportation seeking to evaluate the need to reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions use evidence of WVC and other data to inform decisions about WVC mitigation. Mitigation infrastructure, such as wildlife crossings with exclusion fencing, are effective measures for reducing WVC.

Transportation and other agencies and organizations are increasingly planning and building under- and over-crossing structures for wildlife to traverse busy highways. However, if wildlife do not use these structures due to noise, light, and other factors, then the structures may have a low benefit to cost ratio. Several criteria are key for their success—sufficient safety and/or conservation need, cost, location, and anticipated use by wildlife.

Both stochastic and gradual sea level rise (SLR) from anthropogenic climate change threatens coastal communities and infrastructure world-wide. The major consequences of SLR to shoreline highway systems are twofold: 1) a degraded supply of transportation infrastructure; and 2) travel demand reduction induced by land/infrastructure flooding. There have been several recent and important studies of region-scale impacts of SLR on transportation systems and travel.

This talk will present the soup to nuts approach to specific alignment analysis performed for the State Route 62/Morongo Pass project.

Across the US, mitigation of the spread of COVID-19 included “shelter-in-place” (SIP) orders and related actions, implemented by cities, counties, and governors’ offices. These orders resulted in a massive drop in traffic volumes and provided an unprecedented opportunity to measure the effect of reduced traffic on crashes, including collisions involving wildlife. For California, the Road Ecology Center at UC Davis processes and compiles real-time traffic incidents from California Highway Patrol reports, using a web-accessible database.

Habitat linkages are hypothetical objects developed in geographic information systems (GIS) proposed to connect areas of habitats in fragmented landscapes. Assuming they are used by organisms in nature, linkages could be an important tool for the maintenance of viable wildlife populations and biodiversity conservation.

Wildlife habitat is fragmented by transportation systems, a legacy of land-use and a continuing, often un-mitigated impact of transportation. The primary tools to reduce these impacts are discretionary projects to construct “wildlife crossing structures” (WCS) and associated fencing. Although WCS are relied upon to mitigate impacts to wildlife, little attention is paid to animal responses to noise and artificial light at night in designing these structures and the approaches to them.

Existing transportation and linear conveyance (e.g., aqueducts, pipelines) already bisect blocks of otherwise intact habitat for species at all levels, inhibiting movement and genetic flow in some cases. Often for decades. There is an evolving toolbox equipped with many measures to minimize and mitigated the effects, but little consistent evaluation of the “who, what, why, and where” of implementation and management of the tools.