Highway crossing structures for wildlife: opportunities for improving driver and animal safety

Wildlife crossing infrastructure is a tool for mitigating the disruption of native wildlife resulting from the extensive U.S. road network, a source of wildlife-vehicle collisions that also threatens motorist safety. This report explores the opportunity to renovate this network from one that is designed to serve the needs of people to one that also proactively accounts for the needs of wildlife, while increasing the safety of both. The many challenges to implementing a systematic approach to wildlife mitigation are explored, including how long-range transportation plans often lack information on wildlife needs, the lack of early coordination of wildlife concerns in transportation plans and projects hinders effective mitigation, agency missions often fail to align, easily implementable opportunities are often missed, and no overarching policy requires inter-agency integration for mitigating wildlife-vehicle collisions and wildlife connectivity. Acknowledging these challenges, this report further highlights opportunities and a wide variety of support for wildlife crossings. In addition, measures are enumerated to further strengthen support for the deployment of wildlife crossing structures, and suggestions for a path forward are mapped out.