Date of Award
6-2014
Document Type
Open Access
Degree Name
Bachelor of Science
Department
Biology
First Advisor
Kathleen LoGiudice
Language
English
Keywords
construction, roadways, New York, wildlife
Abstract
Culverts under roadways can provide safe crossings for many animal species and are readily available, numbering over 12 million in the United States. In this pre and post construction study, I added a simple wooden ledge to 7 culverts in Saratoga County, New York to investigate their effect on wildlife crossings. A motion sensor camera was used to monitor each culvert for 2 consecutive summers, 2012 summer without a ledge and 2013 with a ledge. Six species of small mammals accounted for the 55 culvert crossings in 2012 and 58 crossings in 2013. The ledges did not increase culvert crossings or species diversity. Raccoons were the only species observed using the ledge, which they did 58% of the time in 2013. Animals appeared to recognize the roads as danger, as we found a nearly significant positive relationship (p= 0.07, r = 0.71) between traffic volume and crossings.
Recommended Citation
Kelley, Amy, "A Test of Simple Ledges for Facilitating Mammal Passage through Inundated Culverts" (2014). Honors Theses. 542.
https://digitalworks.union.edu/theses/542