A Key Step in the Long Road to Safer Passage for Wildlife

The U.S. infrastructure bill’s funding for wildlife road crossings is just the sort of investment needed to preserve a resilient natural world.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared more than 20 species extinct – news that comes as scientists continue to emphasize that the impacts of the global biodiversity crisis will only continue to escalate without coordinated actions. 

Wildlands Network is committed to stemming and reversing the loss of biodiversity across North America. 

To accomplish this ambitious goal, we’re focused on creating better legal and funding frameworks at the federal government level in the U.S., Mexico and Canada to support increased investment in habitat and wildlife restoration and protection. One critical need is to restore connections between core habitat areas, which means addressing the number one fragmenting force on the continent: our road system. 

To that end, the infrastructure bill currently sitting in the U.S. Congress includes a bright spot for wildlife. Due to the work of Wildlands Network and our partners in the United States, the bill includes $350 million over five years to construct wildlife road crossings, as part of the nation’s surface transportation funding program. We believe that this sort of incremental change that is needed to preserve a resilient natural world — and can serve as a catalyst for bigger and bolder actions in D.C. and across North America. 

Aligning government action to directly benefit wildlife on the ground is no small task. In many senses, we must look beyond our traditional conceptions. As The Nature Conservancy’s Lynn Johnson mentioned in her recent blog, infrastructure is more than just roads, buildings and electrical lines. “It is the things we need for a society to function,” she writes, “which means our land, water and climate are the most fundamental infrastructure we have.” 

This expansive view is important and one that we hope to ingrain in federal and state law across North America in the coming years and decades. We know we’ve got a long road (pun intended!) ahead of us. But for now, this step towards safer passage for wildlife is a beacon of hope for us and for animals in the midst of crisis. 

Photo: EDB3_16/Adobe Stock