Celebrate Wildlife Crossings Week!
From Wildlands Network. Click here for additional information about Wildlands Network and Eastern Wildway Resources.
Featured image: Deer under Hyak Underpass, I-90, Washington © Conservation Northwest
Next week, ARC Solutions (Appalachian Regional Commission) and the National Wildlife Federation are partnering on an interactive Facebook Live series featuring conversations with leading local and global experts dedicated to the study, design and construction of wildlife crossings.
As part of its successful P-22 Presents series, the National Wildlife Federation’s #SaveLACougars campaign will launch “Wildlife Crossing Week” – a set of live and interactive online presentations featuring over 20 leading experts in road ecology, wildlife biology, engineering, design, science and policy.
The series is being hosted in collaboration with ARC Solutions, an international partnership that facilitates new thinking, new methods, new materials and new solutions for wildlife infrastructure, which is fiscally sponsored by the Center for Large Landscape Conservation.
Conversations will be live on P-22’s Facebook Page. Highlights include an overpass in Wyoming to preserve a 6,000-year-old pronghorn migration route; an experimental research highway in northern California; a network of structures in Banff and Yoho National Parks in Canada that have been used over 200,000 times by grizzly bears, cougars, wolves, and moose; a coalition of partners including Wildlands Network and NPCA working on the I-40/Pigeon Gorge project near the Great Smoky Mountains in NC and TN, and Chris Slesar will talk about his work on safe passage for frogs and salamanders in Vermont.
Please take a look at the attached schedule, mark your calendars, and join us next week!
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Nature is intimately connected. When one component is changed or lost it can have enduring consequences for the entire system. This interdependence is part of what makes our natural world so remarkable but also emphasizes the importance of ecosystems remaining intact and unaltered.
It was this understanding that, in 1991, led Michael Soulé, Reed Noss, Jim Estes, and other preeminent scientists along with visionary Wildlands advocate Dave Foreman to establish an organization devoted to the continental-scale conservation of core habitat and migration corridors for wildlife. Known today as Wildlands Network, we share our founders’ mission of reconnecting, restoring and rewilding North America so that life—in all its diversity—can thrive. Our work is founded in science, driven by fieldwork and furthered through strategic policy and partnerships.
With staff based across the United States and in Mexico, Wildlands Network has been at the forefront of continental-scale conservation for 30 years. The core principle of all we do is this: if protected areas are connected with healthy habitats on a continental scale, our treasured native plants and animals will thrive—as will life-supporting ecological processes like carbon storage and pollination, and high water quality. Our work has inspired the establishment of similar organizations across the world, and our commitment to the prosperity of wildlife and wild spaces is emboldened in the face of the challenges of our rapidly developing world. wildlandsnetwork.org