<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN">
<html><head><style type="text/css"><!--
blockquote, dl, ul, ol, li { padding-top: 0 ; padding-bottom: 0 }
--></style><title>Roads, more roads: Consequences for birds,
mammals</title></head><body>
<div><font face="Lucida Grande">PNAS Early Edition</font><font
face="Arial"><br>
</font><font face="Lucida Grande">doi:
10.1073/pnas.1522488113</font><font face="Arial"><br>
</font><font face="Lucida Grande"><br>
Assessing large-scale wildlife responses to human infrastructure
development</font><font face="Arial"><br>
</font><font face="Lucida Grande">Aurora Torres et al</font><font
face="Arial"><br>
</font><font face="Lucida Grande"><br>
Abstract</font><font face="Arial"><br>
</font><font
face="Lucida Grande"><u
>http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/07/05/1522488113.abstract</u></font
><br>
</div>
<div><font face="Lucida Grande">Habitat loss and deterioration
represent the main threats to wildlife species, and are closely linked
to the expansion of roads and human settlements. Unfortunately,
large-scale effects of these structures remain generally overlooked.
Here, we analyzed the European transportation infrastructure network
and found that 50% of the continent is within 1.5 km of transportation
infrastructure. We present a method for assessing the impacts from
infrastructure on wildlife, based on functional response curves
describing density reductions in birds and mammals (e.g., road-effect
zones), and apply it to Spain as a case study. The imprint of
infrastructure extends over most of the country (55.5% in the case of
birds and 97.9% for mammals), with moderate declines predicted for
birds (22.6% of individuals) and severe declines predicted for mammals
(46.6%). Despite certain limitations, we suggest the approach proposed
is widely applicable to the evaluation of effects of planned
infrastructure developments under multiple scenarios, and propose an
internationally coordinated strategy to update and improve it in the
future.</font></div>
<x-sigsep><pre>--
</pre></x-sigsep>
</body>
</html>