Wildlife corridors in urban environments enable animal movement between habitat patches, reducing road mortality, territorial exclusion and genetic isolation in fragmented urban landscapes.
Urban wildlife corridor welfare reduces the road mortality and territorial exclusion that are the primary welfare costs of urban habitat fragmentation. Animals forced to cross roads face collision risk; animals unable to cross fragment their social and foraging range, affecting nutrition and reproduction. Corridors enable animals to reach resources, mates and seasonal habitats without fatal crossing attempts. The cost of corridor provision is modest relative to welfare benefit: hedgehog holes in garden fences cost nothing and benefit the entire local hedgehog population; green bridges cost more but benefit multiple species for decades. Urban planning that embeds corridor requirements protects wildlife welfare at the landscape scale where individual actions have cumulative effect.