Long-Term Monitoring & DNA-Based Approaches to Restoring Landscape Connectivity Across Transportation Corridors

WTI compiled results of research and monitoring for use in a wide range of applications useful to transportation planning, practice, and policy in areas where road networks and landscape conservation concerns collide.

Within the Yellowstone to Yukon Ecoregion, habitat fragmentation and physical barriers undermine the integrity of the vast ecological network. Major transportation corridors and road networks are of greatest concern and perhaps the most acute obstruction to conserving animal populations in the entire area. The anticipated growth in population and projected highway improvement plans in the Rocky Mountain cordillera, coupled with the resounding concern for maintaining large-scale, landscape connectivity will continue to generate interest in conservation tools and applications for addressing the diverse issues linking transport, ecology and local communities. Research to date has produced key results in establishing benchmark mitigation plans for the design of 17 new wildlife crossings scheduled for the Trans-Canada Highway (TCH) west of Banff.