Road orientation affects the impact of roads on wildlife
Margarita Mulero-Pázmány
A B * , Laura Rollán C , Marcello D’Amico D E and Manuela González-Suárez F
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A Department of Animal Biology, Facultad de Ciencias, University of Málaga, 29071 Málaga, Spain.
B School of Biological and Environmental Sciences, Liverpool John Moores University, 3 Byrom Street, Liverpool L3 3AF, UK.
C Cybertracker Conservation, Plaza del Comercio 2, 21750 El Rocío, Huelva, Spain.
D CIBIO-InBIO, School of Agriculture, University of Porto and University of Lisbon, Tapada da Ajuda Campus, 1349-017 Lisbon, Portugal.
E Present address: Department of Conservation Biology, Doñana Biological Station CSIC, C/Américo Vespucio 26, 41092 Seville, Spain.
F Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Reading, Reading RG6 6EX, UK.
Wildlife Research 50(1) 39-46 https://doi.org/10.1071/WR21149
Submitted: 12 October 2021 Accepted: 16 April 2022 Published: 14 July 2022
© 2023 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY)
Abstract
Context: Understanding the factors determining the impacts of roads and how they fragment landscapes limiting the movement of animals, is key to implement efficient mitigation measures.
Aims: Here we investigate if road orientation in relation to limiting resources, a largely overlooked factor on road impact assessments, can influence the movement of animals within a landscape where water resources are spatially clustered.
Methods: We evaluated movement by monitoring animal tracks on unpaved roads: two with a North–South orientation and two with an East–West orientation.
Key results: Animals were more likely to follow roads leading to limiting resources (i.e. East–West orientation), confirming human linear structures can facilitate wildlife movements. Carnivores were more likely to follow roads with any orientation and for longer compared to ungulates, whereas ungulates followed roads mainly in the orientation of limiting resources.
Conclusions: Road orientation affects how roads influence the movement of animals in landscapes where resources are distributed along a spatial gradient with different effects for ungulates and carnivores.
Implications: The key implications of this work affect the planning and implementation of mitigation strategies and safety measures. Our results suggest road-crossing infrastructure and fences will be most important in roads traversing a gradient to allow wildlife movement while preventing collisions. For roads along a gradient, crossing structures may be less important, but fences or appropriate signage could be useful to prevent or warn drivers of animals travelling on the road.
Keywords: animal movement, habitat fragmentation, landscape connectivity, mitigation, road ecology, roadkill, track census, wildlife collisions.
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