Making Connections for Wildlife
Aligning Transportation Projects with State Wildlife Action Plans:  A Step-by-Step Guide for Integrated Conservation Planning

Background

Priority Conservation Need: Avoiding Wildlife Impacts and Placing Effective Mitigation in Transportation Planning

Animals move on a daily, seasonal and lifetime basis to meet their needs for forage, habitat and breeding. The importance of habitat connectivity to ecosystem functionality is well documented in the literature (e.g., Noss and Cooperrider 1994; Noss 1983) affecting both terrestrial and aquatic wildlife. Human developments and activities often create barriers to wildlife movement, preventing these needs from being adequately met. Restrictions on these movements affect wildlife at all spatial scales, impacting individual animals as well as populations and even species. Because of these impacts, habitat fragmentation is now recognized as one of the greatest threats to biodiversity and the decline of species worldwide (Ehrlich 1986; Wilcove et al. 1998).

Transportation infrastructure, in particular, is a principal cause of habitat fragmentation, with negative impacts on wildlife (e.g., Harris and Gallagher 1989; Maehr 1984; Reed et al.1996). Animals are frequent victims of roadkill (Forman et al. 2003) as they move from one part of their range to another, or they may avoid roads altogether (Gibeau and Heuer 1996), limiting their habitat area and ability to fulfill certain needs. The impacts are pervasive – a 16 foot-wide road removes approximately two acres of habitat per mile of road, and it is further estimated that the impacts of the road (noise and edge habitat) extend at least 600 meters beyond the road footprint on either side of a roadway (Forman and Deblinger 2000).

In 2005, every state in the nation was required to complete a State Wildlife Action Plan, intended to guide the conservation of species of greatest conservation need and the habitat they depend upon. White et al (2007) note that every state’s plan identifies transportation infrastructure and associated traffic as a threat to key and at-risk species in their state. Several state plans specifically recommended greater coordination with state transportation officials.

Early consideration of conservation needs in the transportation planning process therefore offers an important opportunity for addressing the threat of habitat fragmentation (White et al 2007). Cramer and Bissonette (2007) report in their nationwide survey of transportation and ecology professionals that early incorporation of wildlife mitigation needs into the transportation programming, planning and design process was identified as the number one priority across all states in dealing with roads and wildlife. In order to proactively integrate conservation and transportation planning, planners must have access to high quality conservation data that describes where important conservation resources are located across the landscape, and what the conservation needs are for different types of resources.

The 2005 federal transportation bill, Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU) which funds the U.S. highway program through 2009, specifically recognizes the need to incorporate conservation needs with transportation planning, requiring that state transportation agencies consult with state and federal land management, natural resource and wildlife management agencies in the development of long-range transportation plans (typically a 20-30 year time frame). Each consultation is to include a comparison of the transportation plan with conservation maps and recommend potential mitigation actions.

Such consultation in long-range transportation planning is an essential first step in laying the foundation for early consideration of conservation needs and providing access to natural resource data sets in the long-range planning process. While still a very coarse level of planning, this is the first opportunity for identifying potential conflicts with wildlife, setting the groundwork for further assessment – and funding – in the Statewide Transportation Improvement Plan (STIP), which sets transportation priorities over a 3-5 year time frame (see Fig. 1 for flowchart of the transportation planning process). At this stage of long-range planning, broad-scale wildlife data, including conservation priorities as identified in the State Wildlife Action Plan, should be referenced to highlight where transportation projects intersect priority conservation areas.

SAFETEA-LU Links:

Defenders of Wildlife report: SAFETEA-LU Conservation Provisions of Interest Section 6001

Example of Integrative Long-Range Planning:

With SAFETEA-LU in place, states now have the much-needed framework and regulatory mandate for considering conservation needs in long-range transportation planning. However, there is still a great need for timely integration of detailed and comprehensive conservation data in the STIP. Although transportation priorities are set well in advance of construction, most land and wildlife agencies are not notified in the early stages of project planning and design and, therefore, comment only during the permit review and environmental assessment stages, when transportation projects are well into the development process (Cramer and Bissonette 2007). At this point, changes to the project design typically result in significant delays, increased costs, and offer little environmental benefit. The need to coordinate between natural resource managers and transportation planners much earlier in the project planning process was identified as a specific need in a number of the State Wildlife Action Plans (White et al 2007) to ensure that appropriate avoidance and mitigation measures are implemented and located appropriately. Yet comprehensive data sets at much more refined scale – appropriate for project-level planning – are still lacking in many instances, and the processes for ensuring early consideration of these data are not in place in most states.

Resources from Defenders of Wildlife’s Habitat and Highways Campaign

Linking Conservation and Transportation: Using the State Wildlife Action Plans to Protect Wildlife from Road Impacts

Suggested Agenda for a Section 6001 Consultation Meeting

Getting up to Speed – Transportation for Conservation Advocates

Other Resources

State Wildlife Action Plans

Figure 1:  Flowchart depicting the alignment of State Wildlife Action Plans and the transportation planning process, from long-range planning through construction, including the wildlife data needed at each stage in the process (Modified from White et al 2007).