Research Archives - Center for Large Landscape Conservation

Young male lion in Kafue National Park - Adobe Stock

A Road Runs Through It

At the heart of the Greater Kafue Ecosystem in Western Zambia is the 22,000-square-kilometer Kafue National Park. This is Zambia’s oldest and largest park, at twice the size of Yellowstone National Park in the USA. Kafue is home to a wide range of iconic wildlife, including elephants, lions, leopards, cheetahs, wild dogs, and Africa’s most diverse antelope community. This protected area faces many significant threats, but most concerning is the M9—a high-speed highway that bisects or borders 143 kilometers of the park and adjacent Mumbwa Game Management Area. The M9 is notorious for wildlife-vehicle collisions, including the death of 11 endangered African wild dogs to vehicle collisions in 2022. But the Center for Large Landscape Conservation is working to change this with a newly launched project.

Assessment Identifies Opportunities to Reduce Wildlife-Vehicle Collisions on US 89 North of Yellowstone

Roughly 50% of all highway accidents on US 89 north of Yellowstone National Park—between Livingston and Gardiner, Montana—are wildlife related. In response to this growing and dangerous problem, a locally led partnership called Yellowstone Safe Passages (YSP) just took a major step toward finding solutions by completing a comprehensive assessment of wildlife-vehicle collisions on this stretch of highway, conducted by the Center for Large Landscape Conservation and YSP partners.

Researchers Identify Options to Reduce Wildlife-Vehicle Collisions on US-191 in Montana

The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is home to the largest concentration of wildlife in the lower 48 states. But as the numbers of area residents and annual visitors have grown, so has the incidence of wildlife-vehicle collisions. On US Highway 191 through and around Yellowstone National Park, large mammals like elk and deer are hit with increasing frequency and rising traffic volumes make it harder for wildlife to access habitat on either side. To address these problems, a team from the nonprofit Center for Large Landscape Conservation and Montana State University’s Western Transportation Institute embarked upon a two-year study to better understand wildlife movement and improve road safety along this busy route.

New Study Identifies Important Highway Locations for Wildlife Crossings in 11 Western U.S. States

As our nation’s highways get bigger and busier, wildlife habitat and populations become more fragmented, and wild animals find it increasingly difficult to safely cross roads. The wildlife-vehicle collisions that kill more than one million large mammals each year in the U.S. also cause hundreds of human fatalities and tens of thousands of injuries. To help address this dangerous problem to both wildlife and people, the nonprofit Center for Large Landscape Conservation, Montana State University’s Western Transportation Institute, and Dr. David Theobald with Conservation Planning Technologies have published the results of the West-Wide Study to Identify Important Highway Locations for Wildlife Crossings.

Transforming Gibbons’ Commutes: Researching Canopy Bridges in Peninsular Malaysia

Gibbons are arboreal primates critical for maintaining the balance of their forest ecosystem. As seed dispersers, they help to regulate forest regeneration by spreading seeds throughout their habitat, maintaining forest diversity, and supporting other plant and animal species. Gibbons are well adapted to their tree-dwelling lifestyle, moving quickly and gracefully through the forest by swinging from branch to branch using their arms. So, when a gap occurs in the forest canopy, they lose their primary—and safest—mode of transportation.

New Initiative Seeks to Connect Wild Spaces

WWF, the Center for Large Landscape Conservation and the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas’ Connectivity Conservation Specialist Group today launched a new initiative to conserve nature’s connections: Wildlife Connect. The initiative aims to secure ecological connectivity, defined by the Convention on Migratory Species as the “unimpeded movement of species and the flow of natural processes that sustain life on Earth.” From great migrations of wildlife across landscapes and continents to river flows from mountain to sea, nature’s circulatory system of connections is essential for a healthy planet. Yet they are rapidly disappearing, destabilizing ecosystems and the essential benefits they provide for us all.

On the Trail of Oncilla in Costa Rica

People who are cat people know that cats have their own agenda. People who are dog people recognize that dogs want to share their agendas with you. We get to mix these agendas when working a detection dog to find scat from an elusive cat in Costa Rica. In the high forests of this beautiful country, hide a suite of cat species—from jaguar and cougar, to ocelot, margay and jaguarundi. And while always there, but rarely seen, is a small, spotted, nocturnal cat called oncilla. So little is known of this cat, that their scat—or poop—holds precious genetic information that can help us learn more about this declining species, and well… dogs are good at finding hard-to-find things and telling us about it.

Field Notes from Ecuador II: Balancing Rare Species Protections With Rural Livelihoods

A steady rain drenched us head to toe, and as it neared midnight I started to wonder when we would finally head back to camp. The herpetologists, though, were unconcerned with the elements. They scrambled up and down steep muddy slopes in search of reptile and amphibian specimens. In all likelihood, the fruits of their labor would be the discovery of species completely new to science! When the group finally called it quits for the night, the transect had yielded a half dozen frogs, a plump lizard, and a beautiful, non-venomous false coral snake to be documented and photographed.

Field Notes from Ecuador I: Exploring Connectivity Conservation in a Biodiversity Hotspot

This past weekend, I visited the newly established Parque Nacional Río Negro Sopladora, a national park that covers more than 30,000 hectares of undisturbed habitat in Ecuador, ranging from high peaks at 12,800 feet above sea level eastwards into the humid Amazon basin, at 2,600 ft. A highlight of hiking in this lesser-known park was seeing hours-fresh footprints of mountain tapir and a large cat (my guess is cougar). It was nice to finally get my boots muddy after two weeks in the city, getting situated in the country I will call home for a month and a half.

The Traveling Scientist: Emma Spence

Emma Spence has been busy circling the globe with one goal in mind: to help answer the question, “Do corridors work?” She recently returned to the US from Poland and Italy, where she and local collaborators collected data and genetic samples at wildlife corridor sites. They want to see whether these linkages between areas of habitat are helping promote gene-flow for native mammal species such as the European pine marten and the yellow-necked mouse. As the Wildlife Corridor Field and Lab Manager at the Center for Large Landscape Conservation, Spence is utilizing her expertise in GIS and conservation genetics to identify what factors make a corridor successful.

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