Many highways wind their way through excellent wildlife habitat. Florida’s highways slice through rare black bear habitat. Alaska struggles with moose-vehicle collisions. Grizzly bears in the northern Rockies are killed on highways or avoid crossing them, limiting them to smaller areas. Solutions are available, but the information is widely scattered. The Wildlife Crossings Toolkit gathers information in one location on proven solutions and lessons learned. Who can use the toolkit? Professional wildlife biologists, engineers, and transportation planners can use the toolkit to work together to create innovative solutions for wildlife-friendly highways and railways. Features: 1. Case Histories • Fully searchable database of case histories • Highlights projects from around the world • Provides examples of solutions used in planning or retrofitting to prevent highway-caused impacts to wildlife • Demonstrates collaboration of engineers and biologists • Includes sections on alternative approaches and suggested modifications • Includes engineered drawings and photos 2. Resources • Summary articles by experts on wildlife habitat connectivity, highway impacts, and solutions • Extensive illustrated glossary to facilitate a common lexicon between engineers and biologists • Links to other pertinent resources including ICOET proceedings and international information 3. Training and Workshops The USDA Forest Service has developed associated training sessions to complement the information in the Wildlife Crossings Toolkit.

The need for a comprehensive (yet concise) training course on the basics of highway and wildlife interactions has become more apparent as more transportation engineers and wildlife biologists are faced with demands to consider wildlife mortality and connectivity issues and to incorporate wildlife crossing structures in highway projects. The USDA Forest Service has developed an interagency, interdisciplinary two-day training session that walks engineers and biologists through the basics of habitat connectivity, impacts to wildlife from highways, effective mitigation measures, funding sources, and law and policy related to highway projects. This course, Innovative Approaches to Wildlife and Highway Interactions, has been designed to be taught by a wildlife biologist and a transportation engineer, with a target audience of mixed, mid-level professionals who are planning highway projects of various types. The course was designed to integrate disciplines so that the challenging situations we face in highway projects can be innovatively solved and networking between agencies and disciplines is facilitated. The course is modular and based on the Wildlife Crossings Toolkit (http://www.wildlifecrossings.info), also developed by the USDA Forest Service, and current scientific works. Eight sessions across the country have been completed since course development, with participants from eight state DOT’s, FHWA, NGO’s, state fish and wildlife agencies, FWS, and three federal resource agencies. Departments of transportation and resource agencies are welcome to host training sessions across the country with these training materials and instructors. Funding for the course development was provided by the Coordinated Transportation Improvement Project fund, an interagency pooled fund.