Roads kill millions of animals annually and fragment wildlife populations, but strategically placed underpasses, overpasses, and crossing structures can dramatically reduce this toll with evidence-based design.
Road collisions cause severe trauma, acute suffering, and death for individual animals. Slower deaths from non-lethal vehicle strikes involve prolonged suffering without the ability to seek help or water. Beyond immediate mortality, roads cause population isolation through fragmentation, leading to inbreeding, reduced genetic diversity, and local extinctions. Crossing structures reduce both individual welfare impacts from collisions and population-level conservation harms from fragmentation. Investment in well-designed crossing infrastructure represents one of the most cost-effective interventions for both wildlife welfare and conservation.