The construction of roads destructs habitat of species. However, the spatial effect of roads, due to the disturbance of traffic, and to the interruption of the dispersal flow across the landscape, is usually much larger. The construction of wildlife passages and the development of compensatory habitat and corridor zones must be considered in the light of mitigating the spatial effect, and preferably with reference to the survival change of the population. Metapopulation theory offers a good basis for assessing the effectivity of these measures, and for developing simulation models to evaluate the effectivity of alternative solutions, for instance different combinations of wildlife passages and compensatory habitat. Measurements of the use of passages or the amount of traffic kills are usualy hard to interprete in terms of population persistence, but are useful to compare the effectiveness of different types of technical solutions locally.
Abstract