Railways as Barriers for Wildlife: Current Knowledge

摘要: In this chapter we provide practical suggestions, together with examples, to identify, monitor and mitigate railway barrier effects on wildlife, as is considered one of the railways’ greatest impacts. Railways can be both physical behavioral barriers wildlife movement, well disturbance populations living close them. Also, mortality recognized an important contribution effect. However, consequences habitat loss, fragmentation due railways alone remain largely unexplored. Barrier have mainly been mitigated passes, effectiveness tool being most-studied topics in Railway Ecology. Methods formerly employed pass usage, such track beds or video-surveillance, are now replaced by molecular ones. Among latter methods, genetic fingerprinting allows individual-based approaches, opening door population-scale studies. fact, sampling for assessment functional connectivity, which closely linked successful reproduction population viability, variables not necessarily coupled crossing rates. There strong evidence that verges offer new habitats generalist species opportunistic individuals, a point deserves experimentally explored order find wildlife-friendly policies. Preventing animals from (e.g., fencing), should reserved collision hotspots, it increases effects. Instead, has shown warning signals pole effectively reduce collisions without increasing respect, argue computer simulations promising field investigate potential impact scenarios. Finally, present protocol guide planners managers when assessing effects, emphasis monitoring mitigation strategies.