A few large roads or many small ones? How to accommodate growth in vehicle numbers to minimise impacts on wildlife

Roads and vehicular traffic are among the most pervasive of threats to biodiversity because they fragmenting habitat, increasing mortality and opening up new areas for the exploitation of natural resources. However, the number of vehicles on roads is increasing rapidly and this is likely to continue into the future, putting increased pressure on wildlife populations. Consequently, a major challenge is the planning of road networks to accommodate increased numbers of vehicles, while minimising impacts on wildlife. Nonetheless, we currently have few principles for guiding decisions on road network planning to reduce impacts on wildlife in real landscapes. We addressed this issue by developing an approach for quantifying the impact on wildlife mortality of two alternative mechanisms for accommodating growth in vehicle numbers: (1) increasing the number of roads, and (2) increasing traffic volumes on existing roads. We applied this approach to a koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) population in ...

道路与机动车交通是对生物多样性最普遍的威胁之一，因其会割裂栖息地、提升野生动物死亡率，并为自然资源开发开辟新区域。然而，道路上的机动车数量正快速增长，且这一趋势未来仍将持续，会给野生动物种群带来更大的生存压力。因此，当前面临的一项核心挑战是，在规划道路网络以容纳日益增长的机动车保有量的同时，尽可能降低对野生动物的负面影响。尽管如此，目前我们仍缺乏能够指导实际景观中道路网络规划决策、以降低其对野生动物影响的相关原则。为此，我们开发了一种量化方法，用以评估两种应对机动车数量增长的方案对野生动物死亡率的影响：其一为新增道路数量，其二为提升现有道路的交通流量。我们将该方法应用于某地区的考拉（Phascolarctos cinereus）种群研究中……