Marcel Huijser (Montana State University): Road Ecology: Are we taking the right turns?

Data: 03 de julho de 2018
Date: July 03rd, 2018

Hora: 13h:00
Time: 1h:00 PM

Local (Room): Sala de defesa de tese, Bloco O, Prédio da Pós graduação, Instituto de Biologia, Unicamp, Campinas, São Paulo, Brasil

Ecologia de estradas: estamos no caminho certo?

A ecologia de estradas teve avanços substanciais nas ultimas décadas. Nosso conhecimento aumentou e medida mitigatórias visando a redução do impacto das estradas e do trafico sobre a vida selvagem estão agora difundidas e são implementadas regularmente. Em muitos casos, as medidas mitigatórias visam a segurança humana ao reduzir a colisão de veículos com mamíferos de grande porte, ao fornecem oportunidades de travessia segura para os animais, podendo até mesmo fazer sentido implementar estas medidas de um ponto de vista econômico. Esses sucesso talvez sejam razões para celebrarmos. Entretanto, talvez seja a hora de pensarmos se estamos seguindo o caminho certo. Quais são os efeitos das estradas e do trafico que estamos mitigando? Estamos esquecendo alguma coisa? O que nós precisamos fazer para que as medidas mitigatórias sejam implementadas em sessões de estrada de interesse para a conservação das especies mas que não são preocupantes do ponto de vista da segurança humana? As regiões que estão sendo mitigadas são as corretas e estão de acordo com nosso objetivos? Quais são os nossos vieses? Podemos melhorar os projetos dessas medidas mitigatórias para torna-las mais efetivas? Podemos ser mais inteligentes e melhorar a efetividade dessas medidas? Podemos quantificar o que é necessário para alcançar nossos objetivo?

Road Ecology: Are we taking the right turns?

Road ecology has made substantial advances over the last few decades. Our knowledge has increased and mitigation measures to reduce the impacts of roads and traffic on wildlife are now widespread and implemented regularly. In many cases, the mitigation measures address human safety through reducing collisions with large mammals, provide safe crossing opportunities for wildlife, and it can even make economic sense to implement these mitigation measures. These successes may be reason to celebrate. However, it may also be time for

us to think about whether we are taking the right turns. What are the effects of roads and traffic that we are mitigating? Are we forgetting things? What do we

need to do to get mitigation implemented along road sections that are a concern to biological conservation but that are not a major safety concern? Are the locations we mitigate the correct locations and are they consistent with our objectives? What are the biases in our processes? Can we improve on the design of the mitigation measures to make them more effective? Can we be smarter and optimize the effectiveness of mitigation measures? Can we quantify what is needed to achieve our objectives?

Marcel Huijser is a lead researcher in road ecology at the Western Transportation Institute at Montana State University, USA, where he leads a range of road and wildlife related projects for state and federal governments, counties, foundations, and other funders. He was the lead scientist on the 15-year long US Highway 93 wildlife mitigation project, which was a 90km long highway duplication project that dissected important natural habitats, agricultural land, and small villages on the Flathead Indian Reservation. 
Marcel is recognised internationally for his work on the development and testing of animal detection systems that alert drivers to the presence of large mammals along highways, having conducted trials in Yellowstone National Park, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, and Pennsylvania. Marcel and colleagues at WTI have undertaken a number of commissioned reports for the national US government on measures aimed at reducing wildlife-vehicle collisions and at mitigating the barrier effects of transportation infrastructure. 
Marcel is also a visiting professor at the University of São Paulo in Brazil where he has been teaching road ecology on a regular basis since 2014 and collaborating on a diverse suite of road-impact and mitigation studies. Some of these Brazilian projects include quantifying roadkill along the toll roads in São Paulo State, the development of a Brazilian animal detection system, and the evaluation of wildlife mitigation measures along the road through Carlos Botelho State Park that hosts one of the largest remaining fragments of Atlantic forest in Southern Brazil with threatened and endangered species such as the jaguar, southern muriqui and South American tapir. Marcel’s Ph.D. (2000) was on hedgehog road mortality and mitigation strategies in The Netherlands, in collaboration with the Dutch Society for the Study and Conservation of Mammals. In his spare time and professionally, Marcel writes a blog of road ecology photos. His photo website probably hosts the largest collection of road ecology images in the world.