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> "I told him I was so sorry that we did not make the world a safer place for him," said Beth Pratt of the National Wildlife Federation, who was present for P-2
by bmitc 4y ago
> "I told him I was so sorry that we did not make the world a safer place for him," said Beth Pratt of the National Wildlife Federation, who was present for P-22's final moments.
> The great slashes of asphalt also make journeys to new homes potentially deadly. In September, a pregnant mountain lion was struck and killed when she tried to cross a Malibu highway, which bisects a key swathe of habitat. She and her four unborn cubs all had traces of rat poison in their systems.
> Once, Mr Ordeñana captured a video of P-22 making plaintive mating calls. They would never be answered; the freeways and development surrounding Griffith Park guaranteed he was walled off from any potential females and would never reproduce.
That all hits hard.
I feel like a raging narcissist every time I'm on a road and especially on highways. On highways, it's especially clear to me as they often separate more natural landscapes (mainly because people want trees to stave off some sound from the highway). But driving down them, and especially when seeing animals on the highway dead or alive, I'm just filled with sadness that we take away wildlife's freedom and mobility. Imagine some other being just straight up divided a city, a state, or a country, forever cutting you off from family, friends, recreation, food (that your life depends on), etc. unless you are able to pass through a gauntlet of high-speed machines that confuse and blind you and scale walls and valleys.
- themaninthedark 4y agoGreen bridges are a thing that could exist. I remember reading about them some time ago, thinking about how they could help prevent deer strikes on the roads where I live. https://www.thelocal.de/20130918/51975/ https://www.thelocal.de/20130918/51975/ https://germanyinusa.com/2021/05/13/green-bridges-help-animals-safely-cross-the-german-autobahn/ https://germanyinusa.com/2021/05/13/green-bridges-help-anima...
- jacquesm 4y agoWe have plenty of those here. Ecoducts they're called.
- bmitc 4y agoYea, I know about them. They're better than nothing, but they also radically change the wildlife dynamics because of the funneling aspect.
- shagie 4y agohttps://y2y.net/blog/how-do-wildlife-know-to-use-animal-bridges/ https://y2y.net/blog/how-do-wildlife-know-to-use-animal-brid... Some information on trying to establish a wildlife corridor from Yellowstone to the Yukon. There are a number of wildlife crossings that I recall up in Canada near Banff - and that shows some pictures of them. And on the "how does it change things?" > DO PREDATORS USE THESE CROSSINGS LIKE TRAPS? A common question about crossings and fencing is if predators use the corridors to more easily trap prey. The short answer is no. > Between 2012 and 2015, researchers from University of Alberta looked into this idea in a series of 17 crossings in Quebec’s Laurentides Wildlife Reserve. > After examining photos of more than 11,000 mammals using wildlife underpasses, they did not find any evidence of predators taking advantage of the crossing design to capture their dinner. > Additional evidence shows that the carnivores, including wolves, coyotes or lynx, did not follow prey into the passages, either. So it appears these crossings do not provide the easy meal they might seem to.
- midoridensha 4y ago>Imagine some other being just straight up divided a city, a state, or a country, forever cutting you off from family, friends, recreation, food (that your life depends on), etc. It's not just animals; America has a long history of using highways to do exactly this to marginalized/poor communities.
- ben-schaaf 4y ago> Imagine some other being just straight up divided a city, a state, or a country, forever cutting you off from family, friends, recreation, food (that your life depends on), etc. unless you are able to pass through a gauntlet of high-speed machines that confuse and blind you and scale walls and valleys. This seems like a very apt description of what urban freeways and car-centric planning in general does to urban areas.