Large Landscape News

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.

Asian Elephant And Machinery 2, Malaysia Gary Tabor

Just Published: ‘Addressing Ecological Connectivity in the Development of Roads, Railways, and Canals’

The planet is experiencing unprecedented levels of land conversion and habitat loss, often in the most biologically rich ecosystems. Despite the well-known societal and economic benefits of infrastructure, indiscriminate development of roads, railways and canals increasingly threatens biodiversity. Endangered Asian elephants are regularly hit by trains; American bison are struck just outside Yellowstone National Park; and road construction opens the door to runaway deforestation, even deep in the Amazon Rainforest.

Exploring the Wonders of Central Asia: Field Expedition in Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan’s “Mountain Ecosystems of Koytendag” (MEK) make up one of the most distinctive and richly biodiverse landscapes in Central Asia. However, the area faces mounting threats to its conservation, including agricultural expansion, overgrazing, illegal hunting, and unmanaged tourism. As part of our project ‘Connectivity, Capacity, and Cats: Building Resiliency in the Mountain Ecosystems of Koytendag,’ funded by the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF), national and international experts traveled around this extraordinary region from 5-11 April 2023. Among the goals was to help evaluate the possibility of it being officially designated as a UNESCO Natural World Heritage Site.

Our International Connectivity Conservation Action Plan for 2030

In December 2022, representatives from the Center for Large Landscape Conservation were present in Montreal, Canada when 188 countries made an historic commitment adopting the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). As a main outcome of Convention on Biological Diversity’s 15th Conference of the Parties, the GBF is now the most significant agreement to date for bolstering global cooperation to conserve and restore nature. Since then, the Center has been engaging in discussions and planning across its networks of experts and institutions to best coordinate actions to support lasting conservation gains on the ground. With the importance of connectivity and landscape- and seascape-scale approaches emphasized in the GBF, it is clear that the Center has a significant role to play in its implementation.

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.

Drone Footage Of A Colorado Wildlife Crossing. Credit: Tony Cady/CDOT

New Federal Funding to Build Life-Saving Wildlife Crossings is Now Available

Millions of collisions occur between drivers and animals on U.S. roads annually. To address this dangerous, expensive, and growing problem, Congress created a national Wildlife Crossings Pilot Program. This new grant program will prevent accidents and connect habitat by investing in measures that allow wildlife to safely cross over or under roads and fish to pass through streams beneath roads. Earlier today, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced a Notice of Funding Opportunity for the program’s first round of competitive grants—nearly $112M for research, planning, design, and construction projects that aim to reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions and improve aquatic and terrestrial habitat connectivity.

President Biden At 2023 Wh Conservation Summit Credit @POTUS Via Twitter

Biden Administration Makes Historic Landscape Conservation Announcements

This past month was a historic one for landscape conservation and connectivity in the United States. Each week in March of this year, the Biden administration rolled out a major new initiative to conserve and restore lands, waters, and wildlife across large regions of the country. The recent slew of announcements demonstrates that our movement to think and act on conservation at the landscape level has come of age.

New Toolkit Helps Land Trusts with Wildlife Crossing Projects

While roads in our communities help connect us, they can also divide us by fragmenting landscapes. But now is an exciting time to be involved in conservation and transportation ecology–or the study and reduction of impacts of roads and other linear infrastructure on wildlife and nature; there are unprecedented funding opportunities and new state and federal policies to help implement projects to reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions and improve habitat connectivity. Land trusts can and do play a major role in these efforts.

Experts Agree on the Need for Climate-informed Wildlife Crossings

More than a dozen climate, wildlife, and road ecology experts from across the country wrote a consensus statement urging government officials at all levels to consider climate change when planning and constructing structures that help fish and wildlife cross under and over highways. As the appetite increases for solutions that improve wildlife migration and movement while reducing wildlife-vehicle collisions, there is a heightened need and opportunity for designing infrastructure that is sited and designed in ways that accommodate the current and anticipated impacts of climate change.