Road Mitigation Calculator

Roads often have a negative impact on wildlife populations. They cause wildlife mortality due to animal-vehicle collisions and may form a barrier for animal movements across the landscape. Fences combined with wildlife crossing structures - such as wildlife overpasses and underpasses - are frequently installed to mitigate such road impacts.

Monitoring studies have shown that such measures indeed reduce roadkill and facilitate wildlife movements. Camera traps or track beds often quickly reveal that crossing structures are used by a variety of animals. However, is there enough movement across the road to restore or maintain viable wildlife populations?

This Road Mitigation Calculator addresses that question. Effects of road mitigation measures on populations are difficult to study in the field. Such studies are usually complex, time-consuming and costly. Nevertheless, it is important to estimate what road mitigation measures mean for the survival probability of wildlife populations. After all, only then we can properly evaluate existing defragmentation measures or plan future ones.

Do you want to know
what your road mitigation project will do for wildlife populations?

This Road Mitigation Calculator should be seen as a prototype. The intention is to further develop the tool, e.g. to add functions and analysis for more species groups. The release of this prototype aims to inspire others to address population level impacts of transport infrastructure and collect feedback from practitioners in order to improve the applicability of the tool.