Are motorway wildlife passages worth building? Vertebrate use of road-crossing structures on a Spanish motorway.

Numerous road and railway construction projects include costly mitigation measures to offset the barrier effect produced on local fauna, despite the scarcity of data on the effectiveness of such mitigation measures. In this study, we evaluate the utility of different types of crossing structures. Vertebrate use of 43 transverse crossing structures along the A-52 motorway (north-western Spain) was studied during spring 2001. Research centered on wildlife passages (9), wildlife-adapted box culverts (7), functional passages (6 overpasses, 7 underpasses) and culverts (14), with marble dust being used to record animal tracks. A total of 424 track-days were recorded, with most of the larger vertebrate groups present in the area being detected. All crossing structure types were used by animals, although the intensity of use varied significantly among them (Kruskal–Wallis test, p<0.05); culverts were used less frequently than

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Mata C. Hervás I. Herranz J. Suárez F. y Malo J.E. Are motorway wildlife passages worth building? Vertebrate use of road-crossing structures on a Spanish motorway. Elsevier, 2005. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2007.03.014

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Resource type Text
Date of creation 2025-05-23
Date of last revision 2025-05-23
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Metadata identifier d3573428-77e3-5d2a-86a0-5fc37a045bfe
Metadata language Spanish
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ISO 19115 topic category biota
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Name of the dataset creator Mata, C., Hervás, I., Herranz, J., Suárez, F. y Malo, J.E.
Name of the dataset editor Elsevier
Other identifier DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2007.03.014
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