Planning a Wildlife Crossing at the Urban/Rural Interface: Challenges and Opportunities
An arterial connecting the rural and urban areas within King County, Washington runs through high-value wildlife habitat and a wildlife corridor protected by local regulations. A planned expansion of this arterial near the urban/rural interface would make safe wildlife movement through the area increasingly challenging. The construction schedule of this expansion presented an opportunity to establish habitat connectivity infrastructure prior to expanding the roadway. Project goals and objectives are to enhance motorist safety by reducing on-road wildlife encounters, create or reconnect viable wildlife corridors, improve safe wildlife movement across the roadway, improve habitat connectivity, and incorporate best available science. After first establishing clear project goals and objectives, the team underwent a literature search to find a solution to the initial project challenge: where to place a wildlife crossing structure along the nearly 4-mile-long road corridor. Through the research, the team discovered that most available literature relates to wildlife crossing structures within rural or wilderness areas as opposed to more urban environments. Most crossings in the United States are designed to accommodate migrating wildlife, as opposed to localized populations with smaller ranges, or are placed in response to significant road kill data. The team established a three-tiered system of site-screening criteria, which were tailored specifically for urbanizing landscapes. Criteria were developed to be site-independent (transferable from project to project), usable and meaningful to all road improvement projects for King County, and useful for rapid assessment in lieu of extensive wildlife crossing data. Using the tiered criteria, the team examined the feasibility of placing a wildlife crossing structure along this arterial. Issues evaluated included wildlife species, habitat types present, habitat connectivity opportunities, property ownerships and future land use, vehicle safety and road engineering constraints, as well as recognition of topographic, cultural resource, and utility constraints. The tiered criteria system strongly indicated a preferred crossing location. The principle factors driving the selected location were habitat connectivity, existing and future land-use, and presence of natural and artificial guideways.
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- Summary URL:
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Supplemental Notes:
- Abstract used with permission from the International Conference on Ecology and Transportation, organized by the Center for Transportation and the Environment, Institute for Transportation Research and Education, North Carolina State University.
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Corporate Authors:
North Carolina State University, Raleigh
Center for Transportation and the Environment
Raleigh, NC United States 27695-8601 -
Authors:
- Haemmerle, Howard
- Hartje, Toni
- London, Janel
- Martin, Todd
- Vanderhoof, Jennifer
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Conference:
- 2011 International Conference on Ecology and Transportation (ICOET 2011)
- Location: Seattle Washington, United States
- Date: 2011-8-21 to 2011-8-25
- Publication Date: 2012
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Digital/other
- Features: Maps; References; Tables;
- Pagination: pp 604-616
- Monograph Title: Proceedings of the 2011 International Conference on Ecology and Transportation (ICOET 2011)
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Arterial highways; Habitat (Ecology); Planning; Rural highways; Urban highways; Wildlife crossings
- Geographic Terms: King County (Washington)
- Subject Areas: Environment; Highways; Planning and Forecasting; I15: Environment; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01561108
- Record Type: Publication
- Files: TRIS
- Created Date: Apr 24 2015 11:22AM