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Making the connection: The role of technology and habitat use in making good wildlife connectivity decisions

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  • Making the connection: The role of technology and habitat use in making good wildlife connectivity decisions
David Lawrie, Toronto and Region Conservation Authority
Namrata Shrestha, Toronto and Region Conservation Authority
Gerard Sullivan, York Region
Vince D'Elia, Toronto and Region Conservation Authority
Mitigation / restoration
Technical Session 16: Conserving Habitat Connectivity within an Urban Context

Two sites, two different faunal objectives and two different issues. The first site located along Heart Lake Road in the City of Brampton had a wildlife tunnel installed (2 m closed foot box culvert) based on community road mortality data and concerns around the impacts to the turtle population. Is the new tunnel moving wildlife? And if so, what? The first attempt to document wildlife using the tunnel employed typical PIR camera technology and yielded only typical urban tolerant species. What would a different technology, the Hobbs Active Light Trigger (HALT-2) tell us? Will the installation of two new ACO tunnels in different habitat locations yield different results, and how can this knowledge be applied to other locations in the jurisdiction? The objective at the second site was to safeguard the annual migration of the endangered Jefferson salamander (Ambystoma jeffersonianum) population across a major regional road in the City of Richmond Hill where traffic volumes are 5000 vehicles per day. Here there are plans to widen and redesign the road, and there needs to be a detailed understanding of where and how the salamanders move before making significant investments in long term mitigation efforts such as the installation of new ACO wildlife tunnels. What are the most important habitats to connect? We are letting the animals tell us. Through the use of road ecology surveys, Holohil BD-2 transmitters, and Northwest Marine Technology VIE tags we are tracking the movement corridors that the animals are using, along with the related landscape conditions, to make more informed decisions.

Ecopassage
Mitigation
urban
Technology
endangered species
turtle
Salamander

Header image courtesy of Martin Gradjean -- Air Traffic Network

ICOET 2025 — International Conference On Ecology and Transportation