Drawing on my work in evolutionary ecology, wilderness ethics, and machine learning, I reflected on the tension between our desire to intervene and our limited ability to forecast long-term ecological outcomes. Using examples like the Chernobyl exclusion zone—where many species are thriving in the absence of people despite nuclear contamination—I argued that ecological recovery is often less about precision intervention and more about restraint. We discussed how machine learning can help us simulate alternative futures and understand potential tradeoffs, but that ultimately, the most powerful conservation tool may be humility. More wilderness, not more control, might be the best way to meet the uncertainties ahead.

Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts.

The next step is to take the points below (along with any comments that you might have!) and work them into a manuscript formally calling for an Ethic of Road Ecology. Please let me know if you have thoughts, would like to contribute a case-study, or would like to be involved in any other way with this project.

Do we need an Ethic of Road Ecology?*

As a field, road ecology is built on the fulcrum of balance between contending goals: acknowledgement of human need for development and concern for the environment. At its heart, the field is laden with an ethical quagmire that goes almost entirely unaddressed.

To illustrate this point, I’d like to have you consider the Trolley Problem.

The trolley problem goes something like this, imagine you are in the control station for a train approaching a fork. On the main track, you see four people asleep on the track. You cannot alert the folks on the track, but you have the lever to switch the train onto a side track. Unfortunately, there is a single person on that track.

What would you do? Would you have two options, take no action and watch the train run over four people on the main track. Or, actively pull the lever to switch the track, killing the single person.

This thought process is useful because the binary here forces us to grapple with moral valuations—are multiple lives more valuable than one, and regardless of the choice, do we feel morally responsible for action versus inaction.

Now let me change some of the parameters here to show how transportation engineers are presented with real life trolley problems every day.

Now imagine that, rather another person on the side track, switching the train onto the side track would just take the train on a more circuitous route and extend the trip.

I think everyone would argue to flip the switch. In fact, it would probably be hard to imagine an amount of delay to the train passengers that would justify loss of life. And yet, this is exactly the dilemma we face when designating speed limits.

A universal speed limit of 5 mph would prevent almost all traffic-related mortality, but we probably also all agree that that’s an outlandish solution. After all, we want not only “safe” transportation, but also “efficient” transportation, as codified in the mission statements of most DOTs.

What if, on the side track, is a pile of money that would be completely obliterated by the train? How many dollars would for us to think it ethical not to flip the switch?

Again, hopefully you can see the analogy: in a world with finite budgets, allocations for transportation safety forces us to take out a moral calculator and determine the amount of money in the bag?

Dilemmas like these illuminate the ethical foundations of decision that we otherwise wouldn’t think had anything to do with ethics. It also forces us to uncover our internal moral calculators and really think about how we plug in the moral values behind the valence we reflexively feel toward the outcomes.

Thus far, these examples have involved humans which implies a moral valence. They force us to contrast our deontological or duty-based ethics against utilitarian ethics.

We can take humans out of the equation and imagine dilemmas that force us into a valuation of aesthetics, too. And we can imagine analogies not only to existing transportation management, but to the dilemmas inherent in planning new projects. For instance:

What if the alternative track forever routed trains through the middle of Notre Dame?

What if it routed the train through your neighborhood or right through your front lawn?

What if we replace the human on the track with a herd of deer?

How big does the dollar sign have to be to decide not to switch the tracks? Or conversely, how many deer?

What if instead of deer, this is the last wild rhino?

What if it is the last swam of an endangered mosquito?

These cases invoke an environmental ethic. This also bring this preamble to the topic of this conference, road ecology.

As practitioners of transportation ecology, we are all involved in this ethical project. Folks on the science side help us to define the variables: “how big is the dollar sign, how many deer?”, while folks on the engineering and management side help us define the alternative tracks. Ultimately, as citizens, we all collectively determine which parameter are important to consider and their relative value.

In reality, the field and practice of road ecology is not simple dichotomies. It looks more like this. Where the ethical decision involves complex valuation of trade-offs between combinations of moral, ethical, and aesthetic impacts.

If you had a hard time naming exact values in those first couple iterations of the trolley problem, then you should recognize just how difficult it would be to put finite ranks to all these alternative routes.

Determining the most ethical path requires lots of science and lots of project evaluation. Doing it well can take a LONG time and lots of effort. But all that effort and time can be fraught if those valuations and the process are opaque and unexamined.

A good example is the reconstruction of US93 through the Flathead Indian Reservation. That project was stalled for 15 years because the first iteration of the project plan did not consider the broad scope of ethical factors that were important to the local residents and Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.

We propose that our field is in urgent need of adopting an ethic of road ecology.

Why it matters:

• Practitioners are asked to grapple with difficult decision-making tasks without the proper skills and tools. To date, the field has focused almost entirely on the pragmatic tools to solve the symptoms of roads, but none of the tools with which to diagnose the problems.
• Even worse, when decisions are made and projects developed, there is no established way for vetting the process or outcomes (positive or negative) in a way that contributes to and accumulates knowledge within the field.
  1. Best-practices and guidelines are insufficient. We write best-practices and guidelines, but we don’t have a mechanism to critically compare and contribute to them as a field. Nor a mechanism to ensure that those documents are addressing all of the potential problems.
• As a field, we are really good at answering pragmatic questions about the interface of transportation and ecology. We are really bad at evaluating which questions to ask in the first place.
• There is a danger that road ecology could be used as a justification for greater impact.
• There is a strong argument that as parties to the development of roads, we are moral responsible for fully recognizing and addressing their impacts.
• We can only expect more roads and infrastructure in the future, so these ostensibly minor cracks at the foundation of the field will only grow into larger faults if unaddressed.

The solution:

That we need an ethic of road ecology is easy to say in the abstract, but what would it look like?

There are good examples of how entire fields grapple with the ethical issues inherent in their practice.

For instance, the medical field has a robust sub-field of medical ethics that dates back to the Greeks.

Biologists have the field of bioethics and animal welfare ethics.

Even within ecology, there is a wealth of literature in environmental ethics that deals specifically with the ethics of ecological restoration that dates back to Aldo Leopold and his contemporaries, but flourished in the 80s and 90s.

To date, the ethics of ecological restoration have been considered in numerous articles and books. Even the primary organization of the field, the Society for Ecological Restoration has adopted a Code of Ethics and publishes a full text: Ecological Restoration: Principles, Values, and Structure of an Emerging Profession that deals explicitly with the ethics and values embedded in the practice.

Given those models, the ethical conversation in ecological restoration could be the best analog upon which to build an Ethic of Road Ecology.

But we argue that Road Ecology, as a field, is mature enough and the issues it deals with are distinct enough to warrant its own specific discussion of ethics.

We already have great case studies (good and bad) within the field to work from:

In the U.S.:

• The Paris-Lexington Road
• S. Highway 93
• I-90 Snoqualmie pass
• US Hwy 260 Arizona Tonto NL
• I-75 Alligator Alley FL
• And there are multiple international case-studies in the Handbook of Road Ecology

Specifically we propose:

• Drafting a Code of Ethic for Road Ecology similar to SER.
• Encourage conversations and publications about the ethics of road projects by soliciting presentations, panels, and/or symposia on these topics at conferences.
• Create a platform for discussing case-studies, either in article form through journals or dedicated sessions at conferences.
• Develop guidance in ethical decision-making for practitioners involved in planning transportation projects and include this in best-practice guidelines and future manual and texts about road ecology.

The utility of explicitly addressing road ecology with an ethical framework can extend beyond the practical aspect of a mechanism for evaluating the best project alternatives.

• Most importantly, an open discussion about the values and priorities as a field will bring to light the internal contention we all feel when forced to weigh outcomes, as evidenced by any reflexive confusion you may have felt about the trolley problems I presented.
• Being upfront about values and trade-offs prevents the field from inadvertently becoming a tool of greenwashing to justify even greater degradation.
• Explicating value structures will force us to define the boundary conditions for ethical projects and provide ground for determining, when necessary, where no alternative can be justified.
• It will push the field forward. In much the same way that Forman’s concept of the “road-effect zone” expanded our conceptual jurisdiction of ecological impacts of roads, an ethical framing will force us to further reconsider the extent our responsibility bleeds out from roads. For instance, even if we can fully mitigate a proximate section of road, are we responsible to also mitigate the distal effect if the road section opens up a pristine watershed to development?
• Transportation infrastructure is probably the main driver of ecological change across the globe, and there is no indication it will abate. Unfortunately, we cannot stand still on a moving train (multiple puns intended). The alternative to our proposal of explication ethics is that we either ignore them or make opaque decisions without critical evaluation. This is too often the case in transportation projects. But ignoring the foundation of an action, or lack of action, does not absolve us of the responsibility. Whether we flip the switch or let the train run its course, we are still culpable for the outcome. There is no absolution in inaction.

In the near-term we would like to formally propose and ethic of road ecology in a journal article. If you would be interested in helping to develop that manuscript and in particular if you have case-studies you’d like to contribute, please, let’s talk.

* This presentation was developed in collaboration with:

Dr. Marcel Huijser, Western Transportation Institute at Montana State University

Dr. Daniel Spencer, University of Montana Department of Environmental Studies

Dr. Bethanie Walder, Society for Ecological Restoration

I was only able to stay for the day of my talk and missed the award ceremony on the second day. So it was quite the surprise when I visited the Conference’s website to register for this year and saw that I had won an award for the best speed talk!

Check out the video of my talk below:

Or follow this link to the video.

There are three big take-aways from my master’s research project that was published recently as a open-source article.

1. Wildlife crossing structures do, in fact, promote crossings for large mammals in general.
2. But, the location really matters.
3. And, we need WAY more structures if we hope to completely restore connectivity of movement.

Andis AZ, Huijser MP and Broberg L. 2017. Performance of arch-style road crossing structures from relative movement rates of large mammals. Front. Ecol. Evol. 5:122. doi: 10.3389/fevo.2017.00122

In general large mammals are 146% more likely to cross through the structures than any random point they mosey by in the surrounding habitat. This indicates that there is a funneling effect for the structures. This is great news, and it corroborates some of the wildlife-vehicle collision reductions we’ve seen on this highway. But, if our goal is to promote entirely free movement across the highway corridor, this means that we would need to install enough structures to have about half the road (40.7%) length undercut by wildlife tunnels. It is worth considering that our study used the habitat within 300m adjacent of the structure alongside the road as our control plots, so this is really only true for animals that are already habituated enough to even approach the road. If we had placed our control plots out in the wilderness, I think the data would have told a much different story, since we know that many animals are reluctant to even approach road corridors.

Now that this research is finally published and off my todo list (where it’s been for almost 2 years), I appreciate a minute to reflect on the process. This was my first real foray into academic science. My undergrad in wilderness philosophy had me analyzing metaphoric reconstructions, and in my professional conservation career I facilitated and utilized academic research, but never created it. There are a MILLION things I would have done differently if I could go and do this study over.

However, considering this was a major project to complete, off-the-couch, within a single field season of a masters program, I’m really pleased. I had a steadfast crew of interns to accompany me in the field every couple of weeks when we switched camera sites. I got to work with a great collaborators and mentors in Marcel Huijser and Len Broberg. I got to hang out on the beautiful Flathead Reservation all summer under the shadow of the Mission Mountains. And I gained a glimpse into the Salish and Kootenai Tribes’ respect for the land and their fight for an ecological highway (… a fight that lasted almost 20 years; Kroll’s 2015 article¹ is a great overview).

Press:

The Wildlife Society – Along busy Highway 93, large mammals choose crossing structures

ScienceDaily – No more deer in the headlights: Study finds large mammals do use crossing structures

The Missoulian – Wildlife road crossings work well for deer, less so for bears

UM Vision

Macazine – Kein Hirsch mehr im Scheinwerferlicht: Studie zeigt, dass große Säugetiere Straßenkreuzungen verwenden (German news)

KPVI News

Science Newsline

Laboratory Equiment

Phys.org

EurekAlert!

¹Kroll, G. 2015. An environmental history of roadkill: Road ecology and the making of the permeable highway. Environmental History. 20:1. 4-28. https://doi.org/10.1093/envhis/emu129

Here’s the post in situ. Or you can read the text below.

Imagine that you could close your eyes, point to a map and wherever your finger lands, you would be in that spot when you open your eyes. If you did this anywhere in the United States, at any point you picked, you would be within 22 miles of a road. And, there is an 80% chance you would be within just one mile of the nearest road.

Road are everywhere. In fact, if you were to consolidate all of the roads and parking lots in the US into one place, you’d have enough asphalt to pave the entire state of North Carolina.

All of these roads are a major burden for wildlife and ecosystems. Roads impact wildlife through direct mortality from vehicle collisions and also indirect effects associated with habitat loss and fragmentation, behavioral avoidance, pollution, etc. that always accompany roads. Because of all of these factors, transportation infrastructure is one of the largest impacts humans have on ecosystems.

However, there are projects springing up that aim to mitigate some of these negative effects. One of the largest such project is taking place on the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana  where almost 40 wildlife crossing structures have been installed in a 50-mile stretch of highway, with even more planned in the near future.

The idea is that by installing crossing structures, wildlife will feel safer and more comfortable crossing the highway which will decrease mortality and increase habitat and population connectivity. These crossing structures come in many shapes and sizes. Some look like vegetated bridges over the highway while some look like large tunnels passing underneath the road.

Despite these crossing structures popping up all over the world in road planning projects, we are still not really sure how well the different designs work, if at all. The reason for this uncertainty is simple: there is no way to experimentally test these designs without installing them into a road. And at a price tag between a few hundred thousand and a few million dollars each, we don’t have the option of building testable models.

Fortunately, as more structure are installed each year, we gain new data points for comparison. During my master’s degree at the University of Montana Environmental Studies department, I worked with the Western Transportation Institute to analyze how large mammals interact with crossing structures. In our recently published study, we compared 15 structure of almost identical design to see how well they worked and estimate the amount of variability in wildlife use.

For an entire field season, we hike motion-activated trail cameras out into the habitats surrounding the structures and placed two cameras at the crossing entrances. By comparing the natural movements of animals in the surrounding to their movements through the structures, we were able to estimate how well the crossing designs performed.

After analyzing just under 200,000 images, we now have a pretty good idea that:

1.) These structure do, in fact, promote wildlife crossings in general.

2.) But, the location really matters.

3.) And, we need WAY more structures if we hope to completely restore connectivity of movement.

So, the next time you find yourself cruising down the highway, consider how the road corridor looks from an animal’s point of view. While we can’t eliminate roads, we can do our best to reduce their impacts, but it will take pressure on highway planners (via our state and federal representatives) before the tides change.