Wildlife Crossings: Our Path to Rewilding North America
Our Path to a Wild Continent
Over thirty years ago, our founders pioneered the idea of working across national and state boundaries to conserve habitat for wildlife on a continental scale. Conservation practice hasn’t looked the same since.
Ideas like “habitat connectivity” and “wildlife corridors” are now deeply ingrained in the vision and design of global conservation initiatives. International conservation metrics include measurements for habitat connectivity, and international goals for protected areas explicitly note that such areas must be connected to each other.
Achieving consensus on exactly how to best create a connected network of protected lands for wildlife is still a work in progress. But one part of the solution has become a rallying cry across the planet: wildlife crossings!
Wildlife crossings are the key to rewilding North America.
A bobcat uses an underpass to travel safely under a road in California. Video by Pathways for Wildlife
Pioneering research conducted over decades made one thing very clear: the sophisticated road system that revolutionized human movement and community connection is also one of the biggest contributors to wildlife extinctions.
Wildlands Network’s Chief Scientist, Dr. Ron Sutherland, was one of those pioneering researchers. Studying the effects of vehicle traffic in the Sandhills of North Carolina, Ron realized that no matter how many protected areas we created or how much wildlife habitat was stewarded by communities, if a wild animal couldn’t safely cross the roads that thread between them, connectivity could still wipe out wildlife populations.
He and others documented the many ways in which roads create deadly barriers for all kinds of species from elk and wolves to salamanders and snakes, including:
Directly ending the life of a red wolf trying to run across traffic just a bit too slowly.
Ending the genetic line of a male mountain lion as he unsuccessfully looked for a path to avoid cars and never reached the females in the mountain range on the other side of a four-lane highway.
Splitting a salamander population in two, limiting the gene pool and creating weaker, smaller, and less-resilient populations destined to be wiped out from a virus.
Creating a trap for a golden eagle, courtesy of a dead deer on the side of the road enjoyed just before being hit by a two-ton metal box on wheels going 65 mph.
There are now so many roads across North America, it doesn’t matter what type of animal. None of them can move safely through habitat like they once did, or as they need to survive and thrive.
But they don’t stop trying – leaving one million animals to die on U.S. roads every day in the process.
A young black bear killed by a car in California. Photo by Wildlands Network
And those losses add up. Today, our planet only has 27% of the wildlife abundance it had just 50 years ago.
Wildlife biologists and ecologists have long understood the principles that guide animal movement. Many species have established migration and movement routes that guide their instinctual behavior. When these routes are obstructed by human development, there are grim consequences.
The science is clear: habitat fragmentation reduces biodiversity by up to 75%.
Our roads are accelerating a biodiversity collapse across the continent.
Every day we lose individual animals. Over time, we lose entire populations. Then entire species. Once one species is lost, it can create a cascade of devastation.
Seeds may no longer be dispersed by the animals that adapted to living with them, so some plants no longer grow, which in turn breaks down root systems that protect soil and nutrients from erosion. Slowly but surely, entire ecosystems are dismantled.
Traffic around California’s Lake Tahoe prevents a coyote from crossing a road. The coyote’s available habitat fragments as a result. Video by Pathways for Wildlife
This is how the biodiversity crisis happens. But just as we created it, we can end it – if we act now.
Our path to rewilding North America starts with a practical, feasible solution to biodiversity loss from our roads: wildlife crossings.
Wildlife crossings are structures built to allow animals to cross human-made barriers, such as highways, safely. They can be overpasses, underpasses, culverts, or bridges.
Wildlife crossings have been proven to reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions, in some cases by over 90%.
Crossings mean that elk, mountain lions, turtles, frogs, wolves and bears can make it safely across roads. These structures not only directly protect individual animals; they also enhance long-term biodiversity by restoring animals to habitat and expanding animal ranges.
By enabling migration and daily wildlife movement, these structures also allow species to find suitable habitats as habitats shift and change over time. They facilitate the success of nature-based solutions to climate change, ensuring wildlife are present to support ecosystem functions that help keep carbon in the ground and decrease the potential harm of floods and storms.
Oh, and they help save all of us. Dangerous, expensive collisions with large mammals like elk, deer, and bears kill or injure 26,000 people and cost $10 billion annually in the U.S. alone.
Safer roads for people and wildlife, and a sustainable path to biodiversity? The call is clear: we need to build wildlife crossings across North America.
A family of mountain lions uses an underpass to reach their habitat across a busy road overhead in California. Video by Pathways for Wildlife
Accelerate a Wild Future With Us
Since Wildlands Network started strategically prioritizing wildlife crossings to help reconnect, restore, and rewild North America, our team has successfully secured over $440 million in public funding for our government partners to build crossing structures. This incredible investment is still just the down payment on meeting the need for crossings across the U.S., Mexico, and Canada.
And while our staff have directly led campaigns to fund and build a number of key crossings in specific locations that we have identified as critical to regional connectivity within the continental Wildways, millions of miles of roads need attention across the continent.
We’ve catalyzed a movement that transcends political parties and manmade boundaries.
We’ve seen Democratic and Republican administrations alike create and fund wildlife crossing programs. The U.S., Canada, and Mexico have all invested in successful crossings. Polls show that 87% of people in the U.S. vote for wildlife connectivity. We imagine 100% of wildlife do too.
Each crossing stands as a reminder and monument to our collective commitment to creating a better future for wildlife in North America.
That’s why Wildlands Network is launching a campaign to catalyze the allocation of $1 billion for wildlife crossings all across North America by 2030, and to directly spearhead the construction of 25 new crossings at the highest priority locations we’ve identified within our continental Wildway networks.
You can help us reach these goals. Whether you make a donation, sign our petitions, or share this mission with your community, every action moves us closer to a connected, thriving natural world.
Your voice has power. Your choices have impact. And we don’t have time to waste. More than a million animals bravely stepped or crawled out onto the road today and didn’t survive. But at existing wildlife crossing sites around North America, thousands of animals walked calmly over or under highways and continued with their lives.
This is the better-connected future we all want to see. Help us build that future with wildlife crossings.
Deer, birds, and people coexist thanks to this underpass in California.
