Effects of roads on terrestrial vertebrate species in Latin America

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eiar.2019.106337Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Planned roads in Latin America are a threat to biodiversity conservation.

  • Published research has grown in the last decade with a geographic bias for Brazil.

  • Studies are focused on road mortality, especially on medium-large mammals.

  • There is a need for more research, particularly on the impacts of roads at level of genes and populations.

  • Quantifying individual species responses towards roads and predictive analyses are needed to inform road mitigation

Abstract

Biodiversity in Latin America is at risk today due to habitat loss, land conversion to agriculture and urbanization. To grow their economies the developing countries of Latin America have begun to invest heavily in new road construction. An assessment of research on the impacts of roads on wildlife in Latin America will help define science-based conservation strategies aimed at mitigating road expansion. The aim of this review was to qualitatively and quantitatively assess scientific research papers addressing road impacts on vertebrate species in Latin America. We searched for scientific papers published as early as 1990 to 2017. We reviewed a total of 197 papers. Published research showed an increasing trend in the last decade with a strong geographic bias with a majority of papers from Brazil. Mammals were the most studied taxa followed by birds, reptiles and amphibians. The majority of studies focused on road mortality and at the individual species level. Studies documented an increase in deforestation rates, in land conversion to agriculture, illegal activities (hunting, logging) and the establishment of human settlements. The effects of roads on species richness and populations abundance varied among taxa with no apparent pattern within taxa. Forest-dependent species tended to avoid crossing roads. Amphibians had the highest median road-kill rate, followed by reptiles, mammals and birds. Our results suggest that there is an urgent need for more research, particularly in Central America and to employ predictive tools for difficult-to-sample or understudied species and critical conservation areas. We recommend a two-speed approach to guide future research: one focusing on quantifying individual species responses towards roads and their implications on population viability; a second consisting of regional or continental-scale analyses and modelling of road risks to species and populations to inform road planning immediately.

Introduction

Latin America is one of the most biologically diverse regions in the world encompassing eight of 25 world hotspots for biodiversity conservation (Myers et al., 2000). Latin America's wide geographic and latitudinal variation make it unique in terms of highly diverse ecoregions such as tropical forests, savannas, dry forest, montane habitats, and deserts, with high levels of endemisms and species rich communities of animals and plants (Lamoreux et al., 2006).

Biodiversity in Latin America is at risk today with road construction being one of the main drivers in addition to habitat loss, land conversion to agriculture and urbanization (UNEP-WCMC (United Nations Decade on Biodiversity-World Conservation Monitoring Centre), 2016) (e.g. Bager et al., 2015). Current estimates of road network in Latin America (paved and unpaved) exceeds 3 million km (Meijer et al., 2018). Currently there are plans to invest heavily to expand the road network (Laurance and Arrea, 2017). In 2014, there were 579 projects with an investment of $US 163 Bn (COSIPLAN (Consejo Suramericano de Infraestructura y Planeamiento), 2017) and recently China's ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has extended to Latin America (Stevenson, 2018). The potential long-lasting impacts of road building programs in Latin America needs to be analyzed with caution since the knowledge on the negative effects on wildlife in these areas are lacking.

Road construction and traffic are primary causes of increasing habitat loss effects and additional mortality - two major drivers of biodiversity decline (Isbell, 2010; Laurance and Balmford, 2013; Rytwinski and Fahrig, 2015). Reviews of the effects of roads on wildlife have largely been conducted for developed countries and temperate areas (Trombulak and Frissell, 2000; Taylor and Goldingay, 2010; Kociolek et al., 2010). However, the impacts of roads can be qualitatively and quantitatively different in the ecosystem types occurring in Latin America (Laurance et al., 2009). An assessment and review of research on the impacts of roads on wildlife in Latin America will be important for identifying science-based conservation strategies to mitigate road expansion in the decades to come. We reviewed existing research on the effects of roads on wildlife and their impacts in Latin America, identified critical research gaps of knowledge and define future directions for research and conservation.

Section snippets

Literature search and research effort

We searched only peer-reviewed studies published between 1990 and 2017 using the following search engines and databases: Web of Science, Scopus and Science Direct. Our search included three main subjects: Geographic range (all Latin American countries), taxonomic group (amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals), and road related common terms. We specifically looked for the following words in English, Spanish and Portuguese: (specific Latin America country) AND (“wildlife*” OR “vertebrates*” OR

Research effort on the effects of roads on terrestrial vertebrates

We found a total of 197 studies presenting road effects on terrestrial vertebrate species in Latin America (see Appendix 4). The majority of studies were from South America (89%), of which more than a half of studies were conducted in Brazil (n = 102, 52%), followed by Argentina (n = 22), Colombia (n = 17), Bolivia (n = 15) and Ecuador (n = 12), Chile (n = 7), Venezuela (n = 5), Peru (n = 4), and French Gyuana (n = 3). Only 11% of the studies were from Central America: Mexico (n = 10), Costa

Discussion

The road network in Latin America is expected to increase in the next 25 years (Meijer et al., 2018). Until now the effects of roads on terrestrial vertebrates have been reviewed in temperate regions of North America and Europe (Trombulak and Frissell, 2000; Underhill and Angold, 2000). Our review of the effects of roads on wildlife is of particular importance as it includes some of the most threatened regions on the globe today (Laurance and Arrea, 2017; Habel et al., 2019). Here we describe

Conclusions

Road ecology is an emerging field of research in Latin America and for the most of this territory, the basic science regarding road effects on wildlife communities is still lacking. To adequately estimate the environmental-development trade-offs of transportation infrastructure expansion projects, basic scientific knowledge is needed to quantify impacts at the landscape level and to increase understanding of the multiple and cumulative effects roads have on threatened ecosystems. Given the lack

Acknowledgments

This study was part of the project “Road Macroecology: analysis tools to assess impacts on biodiversity and landscape structure” funded by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tencnológico - Brasil (CNPq) - (grant number 401171/2014-0. FP was supported by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – Brasil (CAPES) – (grant number 1502819/001), doctorate scholarship. APC was supported by CNPq - Brasil (grant number 454186/2016-9) and the Woodcock Foundation. CG

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest. Thank you for your consideration of this paper.

Fernando A S.Pinto is a biologist that holds a PhD in Applied Ecology from Lavras Federal University - UFLA (Brazil). Since 2008 works in environmental licensing projects concerning wildlife monitoring and management in impact assessment studies. Currently, his research focuses on understanding the ecological effects of roads on wildlife in Latin America especially their effects on vertebrate species and populations.

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  • Cited by (0)

    Fernando A S.Pinto is a biologist that holds a PhD in Applied Ecology from Lavras Federal University - UFLA (Brazil). Since 2008 works in environmental licensing projects concerning wildlife monitoring and management in impact assessment studies. Currently, his research focuses on understanding the ecological effects of roads on wildlife in Latin America especially their effects on vertebrate species and populations.

    Anthony P Clevenger is a senior research scientist at the Western Transportation Institute, Montana State University (USA). His research focuses on developing science-based solutions to the increasing problem of expanding road systems and the conservation of landscapes and animal populations. He obtained his PhD from the Universidad de Leon (Spain).

    Clara Grilo obtained her doctorate in Conservation Biology from the University of Lisbon (Portugal). Much of her research has focused on the impact of anthropogenic changes to the landscape and on wildlife. Currently, she is coordinating research projects on road ecology, namely the effects of roads on the abundance, spatial behavior, population genetic structure, risk of mortality and on population viability and the effectiveness of measures to reduce the negative effects of roads on wildlife.

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