We recommend that evaluation studies become an integral part of the road or road mitigation construction project. This will better ensure that such studies are budgeted in a timely manner, properly planned in relation to the planning of the construction, and better communicated with stakeholders. Integration of evaluation studies with the construction project will not solve all problems. A major challenge is also the compartmentalization and project-based organization of most road projects and agencies. Responsibility for the funding, construction and management of roads and road mitigation may be split among international, national, state/province and local governments.

And within levels, responsibilities may be further subdivided, with different AMN-107 research buy sections or departments working on different road projects. Consequently, there may be little co-ordination among projects, even when building near-identical mitigation devices. As such, funding is usually associated with a particular project, and hence mitigation sites and appropriate controls are often restricted to those available on

a project by project basis. There would Selleckchem Gemcitabine be significant gains in efficiency and inferential strength if resources could be pooled—including funds and study sites—among projects to produce well-designed studies of road mitigation effectiveness as recommended by the guidelines in this paper. Finally, one of the most powerful approaches used in science is that of the manipulative experiment. Depending on the specific question being addressed, this may include opening and closing wildlife crossing structures and measuring population

density, mortality rate or gene flow. In the case of testing effectiveness of mitigation structures, it would be ideal to build, say, ten crossing structures, BCKDHB and periodically shut/open them so we can experimentally test what happens to local populations. However, there are many reasons (e.g., finances invested, risk to local populations, political support) why it may be difficult to periodically close the structures. Our paper has focused on detailing the parameters we believe need to be studied in order to evaluate road mitigation effectiveness. However, we also strongly suggest that road agencies consider the installation of mitigation selleck kinase inhibitor measures in a truly experimental manner to maximize the insights gained about their influence on population dynamics. Concluding remarks A comprehensive evaluation of the extent to which mitigation programs reduce the risk of decline and extinction of local populations is essential to ensure that conservation funds are being allocated in the most cost-effective manner. However, only a handful of studies have studied the population-level effects of wildlife crossing structures (van der Ree et al. 2011).