Landscape Characteristics Based on Effectiveness of Wildlife Crossing Structures in South Korea

Abstract

Roads are notable and responsible for the loss of biodiversity and disruption of wildlife habitats connectivity. Wildlife crossing structures (WCS) help wildlife move between habitats by connecting fragmented habitats. Their effectiveness is affected by various factors. Here, to identify methods for improving the effectiveness of wildlife crossing structures, we controlled the effect of intrinsic factors, such as size, that are difficult to improve in an already installed area, and then, evaluated the differences in extrinsic factors using 12 landscape characteristics. Our results show that 18 wildlife crossing structures were selected with propensity-score (PS) matching method. The surrounding landscape characteristics differed between high-effectiveness wildlife crossing structures and low-effectiveness wildlife crossing structures. Particularly, there was a significant difference between the ‘statutory protected area’ and the ‘edge’ index of the morphological spatial pattern analysis among the landscape characteristic variables derived within 1 km2 of wildlife crossing structures. We empirically demonstrate that characteristics around highly effective WCS, statutory protected areas are widely distributed, and the ratio of edge of MSPA is low (within 1 km2). Therefore, an important outcome of our research is the demonstration that management of WCS itself is important, but conservation of surrounding habitats and landscape management plans are also significant.