Probabilistic Measure of Road Lethality
Waller JS, Servheen C, Patterson DA. 2005. Probabilistic Measure of Road Lethality. eScholarship Repository - University of California at Davis. Road Ecology Center, John Muir Institute of the Environment, UC-Davis. Davis, CA
Our objective here was to suggest that the lethality of linear transportation features to wildlife is governed primarily by two factors: traffic volume and time spent on the roadway. Using a simple Poisson model of expected vehicle arrival times, we estimated the probabilities of animals successfully crossing roads under different traffic volume and animal mobility constraints. We used actual vehicle counts from two study areas as examples, and used a study of grizzly bears along a major railroad (Burlington Northern/Santa Fe) and highway (US Highway 2) adjacent to Glacier National Park to illustrate these concepts. We discuss the usefulness of this approach to conservation problems, and place it in context with other efforts to quantify the occurrence of wildlife mortality due to highways.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Waller, John; Servheen, Christopher; Patterson, David
- Date of Issue
- 2005-08-29
- Publisher
- Road Ecology Center, John Muir Institute of the Environment, UC-Davis
- Units
- GLAC
- Keywords
- Connectivity, Grizzly Bear, highway, linkage, Montana, Railroad, Transportation, Ursus arctos, Wildlife, wildlife mortality