Washington Wildlife Crossings Field Course

"Creating Connections through People and Processes"

Priorities Survey Results

Priorities in Wildlife Movement and Transportation
Results of Priorities Survey for Participants of the Washington Wildlife Crossings Field Course, June 2008

Priority Areas

Research, Planning, Everyday Practice, Information Sharing, Education, Agreement-Working Relations, Funding, Policy, and Respondents’ Ideas.

• Research was the number one priority of the 19 responses. It had four entries as the number one response.
• Number two was Planning, with three respondents ranking it as the most important.
• The third highest priority was Agreements-Working Relations, with two respondents ranking as most important.
• Information Sharing, Education, Funding, and Policy all received one response as the most important.
• The priority of everyday practice received no ranking as a top response.

Respondents’ Ideas on the Top Priorities

Research

1. Learn  more about others species - understanding of small mammals survival rate, relation to Average Daily Traffic (ADT), especially marten, badger, bobcat, and ground squirrels
2. Barrier effect of various ADT levels
3. Test/Validate linkage modeling in Arizona and California. These models should be validated, they need to be refined.
4. The habituation of drivers
5. The behavior of animals
6. Data collection, especially A-V-C
7. Monitor pre planning to know where and when crossings are needed
8. The distance between crossings, or frequency of crossings for different species to maintain landscape connectivity and genetic interchange
9. Types of structures, by species, what order they should be placed
10. Pre and post construction monitoring of new crossings and retrofits
11. Species interactions
12. Develop methods for reducing A-V-C where crossings aren’t there yet
13. Standard designs for crossings, best effective for each species, esp. ungulates
14. Standard designs for fencing types, heights, lengths necessary with crossings
15. Fencing when is the tradeoff between preventing road kill and precluding movements/distribution (especially low mobility species) more detrimental than beneficial?
16. Connectivity needs in urban areas
17. Cost effective designs
18. Population level movement
19. Information on terrain types and species’ needs
20. Noise suppression along sections of highway where animals move through
21. Techniques that work
22. Bat and small, medium, and large mammal monitoring with telemetry, relative to crossing structures
23. Mid-scale connectivity and permeability modeling for low mobility species

Planning

1. Move from project level consideration of wildlife to long range plans
2. Statewide identification of linkage zones esp. for Washington
3. Assess retrofitting opportunities
4. Identify most important connection issues and safety issues
5. Move from the project level to bigger land planning
6. Commit funding early
7. Institutional commitments by transportation agencies to include natural resource agencies in all stages of planning, including earliest
8. Need a DOT policy statement
9. Keep costs low but find what works
10. Noise containment, absorption, or neutralization
11. Wildlife passages should be required in all transportation planning so they (wildlife professionals and engineers) don’t have to duke it out on a project
12. Integrate wildlife connectivity data into transportation project planning
13. Dedicated positions in DOT and wildlife agencies
14. Regional development through holistic planning

Everyday Practice

1. Cooperate on data sharing
2. Data sharing on the installation details
3. Data sharing on construction pros and cons
4. Take advantage of existing information
5. Encourage better A-v-c reporting
6. Recommendations
7. Take advantage of retrofit opportunities
8. Recommendations for the most cost effective crossings that work
9. Maintenance – who does it? How funded? Ownership?
10. Cooperation between private and government entities

Information Sharing

Work with all groups, and get as much support as possible

1. Centralized web page or information portal to capture all the information
2. A-v-c information, lessons learned
3. Benefit-cost analysis why it is worth doing
4. Lessons learned in building wildlife crossings
5. Central clearinghouse for research, case studies, literature, etc [www.wildlifeandroads.org is the closest example we already have]
6. Standardization of design specs for successful crossing designs
7. Collaboration between agencies
8. Share products from linkage zone identification, in hard copy and web based
9. A website with this conference presentations and proceedings
10. Share monitoring results, what works well and what doesn’t

Education

1. Outreach in schools, environmental education
2. College curriculum in road ecology
3. Engineering & wildlife & fish workshops for agencies
4. Get involvement and buy in and ownership from local public
5. Public education to develop support for DOTs spending money on crossing structures
6. Youth in schools like WADOT does
7. Educate public on habitat connectivity
8. Make message clear why so many agencies and groups need to help wildlife populations rather than individuals
9. Educate the construction contractors community for better environmental buy-in, to consider wildlife
10. Get support from as many as possible, sometimes biggest opponents can change to supporters with education
11. Schools, drivers ed, TV and magazine ads

Agreements/Working Relations

Overview - Institute a framework for inter-agency collaboration and communication
Dedicated staff to help with early planning and liaison work
All partners, local land planning and sports-people included

1. Internal engineers-biologists cooperation and the community
2. Federal to state to local need to improve coordination and assistance to develop minimum requirements [not said for what]
3. Institute a framework for interagency collaboration and increasing the wildlife crossings and connectivity work as a priority
4. Involve all partners including local sportspeople, county government
5. Continue improving the relationship bwtn engineers & biologists
6. Broad communication among organizations, levels of agreements to determine best places to invest in linkages
7. Train agency fellows to stay in process for the duration
8. Resource agencies need to be equal players in siting and designing connectivity features.
9. Collaboration vs. presentation of proposals for approval
10. Set up agency policies to require communication early in the decision process [SAFETEA-LU section 6001 does this]
11. Dedicated staff devoted to early planning and interagency coordination between transportation agencies and natural resource agencies

Funding

1. Work closely with State legislators, feds too
2. Match funds between agencies
3. Defenders volunteers
4. Find ways to fund pre and post construction monitoring
5. Advertise to environmental managers and staff about funding opportunities
6. Require % funding of highway dollars for mitigation
7. Encourage funding partnerships between resource agencies and DOTs
8. Greater collaboration and support for crossings to be built and funding resources

Policy

1. Mandates and incentives to get agencies to take this seriously, such as DOT policy statements or cooperative agreement with the Game and Fish agency
2. Remove perverse incentives for doing business as usual
3. Western Governors’ Association Recommendations should be implemented
4. Educate Lawmakers/Decision makers
5. Mandates and/or incentives to get policy makers and agency management to take this issue seriously, tell staff to plan for and incorporate and address wildlife issues into planning documents and projects
6. Policy on retro-fitting interstate highway system – all bridge and culvert projects should be required to complete evaluations and rating of wildlife crossing and fish crossing needs
7. Policy on requirements to conduct linkage assessments
8. Standardization of mitigation techniques and designs
9. The Governor and legislature should direct road work to consider wildlife
10. This is very important, use the Doug McDonald (former Secretary of WADOT) policy directive

Other ideas

Permeability for climate changeresearch how climate change impacts future functioning landscape linkage
Linkage management, the next step, such as reclamation, road removal, and rail.
Dedicated positions in DOTs and wildlife agencies