PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
Large carnivores are severely threatened by road infrastructure across Europe, due to direct mortality caused by collisions with vehicles and the barrier effect restricting the movement of populations. In Italy, road mortality of Marsican brown bear (Ursus arctos marsicanus) is estimated at 13 % of all mortality causes, representing an extremely important threat considering the small population size, whereas in the Terni Province road collisions are a threat and an obstacle for further expansion of wolves (Canis lupus). Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus) in Spain has benefitted from several conservation projects, but road collisions remain a major threat to the species; in 2014, 64 % of lynx found dead were killed on roads.
In Greece, important areas for brown bear are interrupted by the Egnatia highway and national roads, with collisions and barrier effects estimated to affect around 30 % of the local bear sub-population. In Romania, 20 brown bears have been killed on 40 km of the main road between Brasov and Bucharest alone over the past five years. In this country, which is planning the construction of motorways, the demonstration of methods to reduce the impact of road infrastructure on large carnivores is extremely important.
OBJECTIVES
The main objective of the LIFE SAFE-CROSSING project was to demonstrate best practices that can be used to reduce the negative impacts of road infrastructure on large carnivores across Europe. Specifically, the project aimed to:
- demonstrate the use of innovative Animal-Vehicle Collision (AVC) prevention tools that were developed during the LIFE STRADE (LIFE11 BIO/IT/000072) project;
- reduce the risk of traffic collisions with brown bear in Greece, Italy and Romania, Iberian lynx in Spain, and wolf in Italian project areas;
- improve connectivity, mainly through the adaptation of existing crossing structures, to enable the movement of populations of the target species;
- increase drivers’ awareness of the risk of collisions with the target species in the project areas.
The project directly implemented the Habitats Directive, by reducing threats to brown bear, lynx and wolf within Natura 2000 sites, and was also relevant to EU road safety legislation.
RESULTS
The main visible project result is the significant reduction in animal-vehicle collisions and the improvement of the ecological connectivity where the concrete conservation actions were carried out. The monitoring of AVC-PS shows that, in total, the system has intervened in more than 1 000 risk situations (simultaneous presence of an animal and a vehicle travelling at high speed) while only six accidents occurred to date. This is an indicative figure but it shows the effectiveness and potential of the system.
The effectiveness of the implemented interventions to favour the use of the existing crossing structures is evidenced by the general increased frequency of their use by wildlife in all project areas. Considering the technical solutions implemented, the “Wildlife Monitoring, Species’ Classification and Visualization” prototype solution developed in Greece by COSMOTE proved to be a very successful and efficient tool to monitor the use of the crossing structures in terms of data quality and accuracy, time and human resources saved. This prototype solution also showed its great potential in terms of replicability as was witnessed by the replication cases already achieved.
Another important impact of the project stems from the road information panels conceived using an innovative neuromarketing technique, and which have proven to be very appreciated by drivers and the local communities.
Main achieved results are:
- an innovative end-to-end prototype solution to monitor the crossing structures;
- a geodatabase to store the data about collisions, animal crossing, project intervention and data collected through the installed devices;
- 26 AVC-PS installed, five in in Italy, Romania and Spain and six in Greece;
- 36 km of virtual fence installed, 25 in Italy, 7 in Romania and 4.5 in Spain;
- numerous crossing structures cleaned and re-adapted to improve connectivity for wildlife: 13 in Italy, 30 n Romania, 55 in Greece;
- vegetation cleared alongside 27 km of road sections in Spain;
- 97 awareness info board installed in Italy, 8 in Romania, 38 in Greece and 24 in Spain;
- the video game “Avoid it!”, downloadable from Play Store and Apple Store, played by round 1 500-2 000 persons;
- the website registered 17 034 visitors, Facebook 2 430 and Instagram 416 followers;
- the project carried out 104 local awareness events reaching about 400 000 people;
- 77 driving school reached and informed;
- 39 networking events held with about 200 professionals reached.
