Wildlife corridors connect fragmented habitat patches and enable animal movement between them, reducing the welfare harms of isolation, inbreeding, resource scarcity, and road mortality that fragmented populations experience.
Habitat fragmentation causes welfare harm at the individual level through resource scarcity, failed dispersal attempts, and road mortality. Animals attempting to cross busy roads experience acute fear and high rates of fatal or injurious collisions. Those trapped in habitat fragments face chronic resource limitation, increased intraspecific competition, and the physiological stress of high population density in small areas. Wildlife corridors address these welfare harms by enabling safe movement, dispersal, and access to resources. The welfare benefits of corridors are inseparable from their conservation benefits: connected populations are genetically healthier, more resilient to stochastic events, and better able to track shifting resources under climate change.