Wildlife corridors connect fragmented habitats, allowing animals to move safely between areas. They benefit both population-level conservation and the welfare of individual animals navigating human-dominated landscapes.
Wildlife corridors address welfare at both population and individual level. For individual animals, road mortality causes violent death or severe injury — an estimated 340,000 deer alone die on U.S. roads annually, with unknown additional suffering from non-fatal injuries. Animals forced into unfamiliar territory by habitat fragmentation face elevated stress, predation risk, and difficulty finding resources. Well-designed corridors with appropriate crossing structures allow natural movement, dispersal of young animals, and genetic exchange between populations. Wildlife crossing initiatives represent one of the most cost-effective interventions for reducing human-caused animal mortality and suffering at landscape scale.