Resources

How to Conserve Wildlife Migrations in the American West (2022). The natural spectacle of wildlife migration has beguiled people for millennia—a sense of wonder that continues today. Aristotle and his contemporaries marveled at the sudden disappearance of birds and animals in the fall and their reappearance in spring. Now, in the 21st century, science is uncovering fascinating new information about the amazing treks that mule deer, elk, and pronghorn make each year across the American West.
Demystifying Wildlife Crossing Infrastructure Projects Webinar Series (2022). This webinar series, co-hosted by ARC Solutions, Center for Large Landscape Conservation, National Parks Conservation Association, and Wildlands Network, provides information on the value of wildlife crossings, how strong data and partnerships underlie project success, and relevant federal infrastructure funding opportunities available.
Innovative Strategies to Reduce the Costs of Effective Wildlife Overpasses (2021). This report compiles design and construction techniques, strategies and considerations aimed at reducing costs, while maintaining or improving the overall efficacy of wildlife overpasses. Examples range from recognition that good design requirements (such as design life, structural loading, and clearance box dimensions) can significantly affect project costs, to acknowledgment that settlement restrictions used for vehicular bridges may not apply to wildlife crossing structures, to recognition that the use of materials such as geosynthetic reinforcing systems and expanded polystyrene blocks for fill can potentially reduce costs.
Highway Crossing Structures for Wildlife: Opportunities for Improving Driver and Animal Safety (2021). Developed collaboratively by a team of engineers, ecologists, biologists, landscape architects, and policy experts, this report summarizes the challenges and anticipated benefits of making a national commitment to a systematic network of wildlife crossing structures to increase driver and animal safety.
Land Trusts and Wildlife Crossing Structures (2023). This toolkit details how land trusts can contribute to highway infrastructure projects for wildlife. It serves as a resource to help land trusts start to or further engage in wildlife crossing structure projects by capturing lessons learned and best practices.
A Toolkit for Developing Effective Projects Under the Federal Wildlife Crossings Pilot Program. This resource provides best practices, examples, and resources for designing effective wildlife crossing projects in accordance with each of the grant application criteria of the Wildlife Crossings Pilot Program.

Reducing Wildlife-Vehicle Collisions by Building Crossings: General Information, Cost Effectiveness, and Case Studies in the U.S. (2022). A 2008 Report to Congress found that WVCs “are a growing problem and represent an increasing percentage of accidents on our roads”. At the time of the report, over the most recently reported 15-year period, WVCs had increased by 50%, from less than 200,000 to 300,000, even though the overall number of collisions remained roughly steady over the same period.
Update and expansion of the WVC mitigation measures and their cost-benefit model (2022). “This report contains an update and an expansion of a cost-benefit model for wildlife-vehicle collisions and associated mitigation measures along highways, that was originally calculated in 2007 US$ and published in 2009.”
Best practices manual to reduce animal-vehicle collisions and provide habitat connectivity for wildlife (2022). The goal for this manual is to provide practical information for the implementation of mitigation measures that aim to: 1. Improve human safety through reducing collisions with large animals, including wild mammal species, feral species, and free-roaming livestock species, and 2. Improve or maintain habitat connectivity for terrestrial wildlife species through safe crossing opportunities.
Animal vehicle collision reduction and habitat connectivity pooled fund study – Literature review (2022). This report contains a summary of past research and new knowledge about the effectiveness of mitigation measures aimed at reducing animal-vehicle collisions and at providing safe crossing opportunities for wildlife. The measures are aimed at terrestrial large bodied wild mammal species, free roaming large livestock species (e.g. cattle, horses), free roaming large feral species (e.g. “wild” horses and burros), and small animal species (amphibians, reptiles, and small mammals).
Strategic Integration of Wildlife Mitigation into Transportation Procedures: A Manual for Agencies and Partners (2022). “This manual instructs agency professionals and their partners on how the transportation planning process works across U.S. states and some Canadian provinces, and how wildlife concerns, specifically wildlife-vehicle conflicts, can be brought into the steps within the process. The goal of this manual is to inspire readers to help institutionalize wildlife concerns into transportation agency mission statements, long range plans, programming of projects, and all the steps to design, construct, and maintain transportation projects.”
The Strategic Integration of Wildlife Mitigation into Transportation Procedures: Practices, Partnerships, and Next Steps (2022). This research explored approaches to assessing wildlife needs to be accommodated in transportation processes and how agencies partner together to help create wildlife crossing structures across the U.S. and Canada.