Eco-viaducts are built to facilitate movements of wildlife, but do they work?

A black giant squirrel utilising a wildlife crossing beneath a viaduct.

Banded leaf monkeys photographed under a viaduct – Gopalasamy Reuben Clements

Eco-viaducts are built to facilitate movements of wildlife, but do they work as such? With that question in mind, biologist Dr Gopalasamy Reuben Clements embarked on a research with the Wildlife and National Parks Department.

Between 2011 and 2013, he monitored animal movements through camera traps at 10 viaducts each at the Aring-Tasik Kenyir road in Terengganu and at the Gerik-Kupang road which traverses the Bintang Hijau Range in Perak and Kedah. (Only three of the viaducts were specifically built for animal crossings; the rest are normal viaducts which can also function as such because of the passageway underneath.)

Gopalasamy found the animal crossings being used by almost half the mammal species recorded in nearby forests.

“However, this does not mean that the viaducts are effective crossing structures because some species were recorded just once under the viaduct during our entire study. Also, the same number of species may be crossing the road without the viaduct,” says the associate professor at Kenyir Research Institute in Universiti Malaysia Terengganu. Read more

Source: thestar.com.my