Prioritizing human safety and multispecies connectivity across a regional road network

Abstract

AbstractThe intersection of wildlife and people on roads raises two critical issues: the barrier and mortality effects of roads on wildlife and risks to people from animal‐vehicle collisions (AVCs). Road mitigation decisions are typically made at the discretion of transportation departments that are mandated to primarily address motorist safety. Therefore, prioritization of road sections for mitigation currently focuses on identification of spatial clusters of AVCs. We sought to understand if AVC clusters align with multispecies connectivity across roads to accurately identify multipurpose mitigation hotspots. We developed a decision‐support tool based on weighted priorities for mitigation planning across 7,900 km of roads over an 84,000‐km2 area of southern Alberta, Canada. To assess alignment, we built functional connectivity models for four focal species (prairie rattlesnake, grizzly bear, mule deer, and pronghorn) and a species‐neutral structural connectivity model. We integrated AVC risk and wildlife connectivity indices into Mitigation Priority Indices that varied the weighting of individual indices. Our results demonstrated poor spatial alignment between road sections of high motorist safety risk and those of high value for wildlife connectivity. Transportation planning would benefit from integrating motorist safety risk and wildlife management needs to prioritize mitigation neighborhoods along roadways.