Road mortality threatens endemic species in a national park in Sulawesi, Indonesia

Changes in the human footprint in and around Indonesia’s terrestrial national parks between 2012 and 2017

“…The survey was conducted along a 21.8-km section of paved highway that crosses the park. Forty taxa, 15% of which are endemic to the Wallacea region, were represented by animals killed on this stretch of road 43 .…”

Rural Transportation Infrastructure in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Review of Impacts, Implications, and Interventions

“…In this way, tradeoffs between rural socioeconomic benefits, transportation finances and investment, and environmental effects will complicate the means by which climate impacts are mitigated. Methods that protect benefits for rural dwellers will require adaptations to the changing climate that incorporate context-specific considerations of the various tradeoffs [59,74,183,190,195,196]. In Nepal, it was found that boys had a higher school attendance rate than girls, and urban girls attended school at a rate 6 percentage points higher than rural girls [178].…”

“…Researchers hypothesize that approximately 25 million km of new roads will be constructed by 2050 [196], with a large amount, potentially as high as 90%, being constructed in LMICs [15,191,198]. In many of these locations, roads will be constructed in some of the world's last remaining pristine wilderness areas, despite evidence that roads attract new forms of activity which directly impact land usage, forest cover, and particular species, and may contribute to larger-scale environmental degradation [9,15,191,192,195,196,198,201]. Accordingly, new evidence suggests moving away from reactive approaches to environmental damage limitation [201] and supporting conservative and proactive enforcement strategies that minimize irreversible effects without prohibitively expensive postconstruction modifications [191,195,196].…”

“…In many of these locations, roads will be constructed in some of the world's last remaining pristine wilderness areas, despite evidence that roads attract new forms of activity which directly impact land usage, forest cover, and particular species, and may contribute to larger-scale environmental degradation [9,15,191,192,195,196,198,201]. Accordingly, new evidence suggests moving away from reactive approaches to environmental damage limitation [201] and supporting conservative and proactive enforcement strategies that minimize irreversible effects without prohibitively expensive postconstruction modifications [191,195,196]. Environmental Impact Assessments [EIAs] can be useful tools in certain cases [201] and the construction of roads in particular areas where substantial socioeconomic benefits are realized with only minimal environmental damages may be an applicable solution for authorities in LMICs with limited funds and organization [191,[194][195][196]202].…”

“…Accordingly, new evidence suggests moving away from reactive approaches to environmental damage limitation [201] and supporting conservative and proactive enforcement strategies that minimize irreversible effects without prohibitively expensive postconstruction modifications [191,195,196]. Environmental Impact Assessments [EIAs] can be useful tools in certain cases [201] and the construction of roads in particular areas where substantial socioeconomic benefits are realized with only minimal environmental damages may be an applicable solution for authorities in LMICs with limited funds and organization [191,[194][195][196]202]. Areas with biodiversity and carbon-sequestering significance can be largely protected from the cascading effects of transportation infrastructure through bolstered legislation and enforcement [196], though some authors argue that these are imperfect solutions [195,201].…”