Avoiding Dead-End Wildlife Crossings – Achieving Connectivity Across and Beyond Highway Rights of Way Through Multi-Organization Collaboration, Planning, Design, Mitigation, and Land Securement

Land conservation agencies, wildlife agencies, and land trusts often have a priority interest in maintaining and restoring ecological connectivity across the landscape. Transportation agencies may not have a mandate to prioritize ecological connectivity, but can have significant influence over connectivity outcomes if they are required to mitigate connectivity impacts of linear developments for environmental, public safety, or climate change adaptation reasons. Even so, transportation agencies are rarely empowered to secure the lands beyond the highway right of way that need to be conserved in order for connectivity mitigation infrastructure to function effectively within a wider connected network of corridors, protected areas, and other wildlife-permeable lands.
This presentation presents efforts underway in Nova Scotia, Canada to coordinate wildlife connectivity mitigation and land securement across agencies which have traditionally had very little interaction with each other, to try to ensure that substantial investments in both infrastructure and land securement result in effective connectivity across rights of way and in the wider landscape.