Pronghorn like this one in New Mexico are among species that need wide open spaces over which they can wander. The elk shown in the cover photo for this blog belongs to a species that migrates been high and low altitudes and needs habitat corridors for travel in between.

Beginning in the early 1900s and continuing for much of the 20th century, conservationists focused on protecting core areas for wildlife—biologically diverse habitats designated as wildlife refuges, wilderness areas, parks and other units.

But since the 1970s, scientists have learned that protecting habitat “islands” is insufficient for wildlife survival.

“Isolated populations suffer a variety of threats,” Kevin Crooks, associate professor of wildlife conservation at Colorado State University, says. “For example, isolation prevents animals from traveling to important foraging or breeding sites. It also heightens genetic risks, such as inbreeding and loss of evolutionary potential to adapt to changing environmental conditions.”

Biologists now recognize that protected areas, even seemingly vast places such as Yellowstone National Park, need to be connected to one another if wildlife is to survive much beyond the next century. These connections often are called corridors.

Here are five things you should know about wildlife corridors:

1. Many wildlife species need to move far and wide to survive.

Each summer, elk leave river valleys to graze on nutritious grasses and forbs in high mountain meadows. Some grizzly bears ramble over an area of 800 square miles yearly. Young gray wolves may travel scores of miles in search of new home ranges. During spring 2009, researchers with the Wildlife Conservation Society tracked a young wolverine that traveled more than 500 miles, from Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park down to north-central Colorado, the first confirmed record of the species in that state since 1919.

2. Long-distance journeys are getting harder for wildlife to undertake.

Roads, fences, rail lines, exurban housing and other developments increasingly chop large parcels of habitat into isolated pieces. This fragmentation lessens what conservation biologists call “connectivity”—the degree to which the landscape allows animals to move from one place to another. Steve Torbit, NWF Rocky Mountain Regional Center executive director: “Every time you put down a road, drill a gas well, erect a transmission line, whatever, it has an impact on connectivity. Wildilfe can’t just move over to the other side of the mountain anymore. It’s all developed. There is no other side of the mountain anymore.”

3. Protected wildlife corridors help wildlife survive.

Also known as greenways, linkages and passageways, these tracts of habitat link two or more larger core areas. Some corridors are naturally occurring, such as woodlands along streams, but others are made by humans, like the 42 culverts recently installed under stretches of U.S. Highway 93 on the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana to make the roadway permeable to wildlife. Another example is the fencing in 2001 of a forested tract running through the golf course of Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge in Alberta’s Jasper National Park—the 1,100-foot-wide corridor allows wolves to use a historical route through the golf course and gain access to low-elevation habitat containing elk and other prey.

4. Protecting strips of land between core habitats can help populations remain viable, but they’re no guarantee.

Some narrow greenways make prey species more vulnerable to edge-hunting predators such as coyotes, skunks, red foxes and domestic cats. In other cases, animals refuse to use their appointed corridors. Consequently, conservationists have broadened their scope to encompass entire ecological regions. Jodi Hilty, director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s North American programs: “Wildlife don’t recognize country, state or international borders, and neither can we if we want to maintain wildlife connectivity.”

5. National Wildlife Federation is working on corridors.

NWF’s Northeastern Regional Center in Montpelier, Vermont, is working with The Nature Conservancy and some 20 other private and public entities to create a vast habitat corridor that will connect six wildlife-rich landscapes in the Northern Appalachians and span a total of 80 million acres across New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and two Canadian provinces. Wildlife in the area—which harbors alpine vegetation, old-growth forest and large blocks of unfragmented forest—includes such locally at-risk creatures as lynx, moose, black bear, pine marten and fisher. Funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Staying Connected Initiative seeks to protect habitat from fragmentation and climate change and to restore landscape connections. George Gay, NWF senior manager: “We want to empower local groups and citizens through education and outreach.”

You too can help protect wildlife corridors.

Adapted from the National Wildlife magazine story “Freedom of Movement” by Tom Dickson.

The photos associated with this blog were donated by a competitor in the annual National Wildlife Photo Contest. If you are a nature photographer, you may want to participate this year in the 41st annual National Wildlife Photo Contest. In addition to cash awards, winning photos will appear in National Wildlife magazine and on the NWF website.

Help support National Wildlife Federation’s work to provide corridors for wildlife. >>

Conservationists don’t organize a press conference to bring attention to a critical wildlife crossing and end up causing a traffic jam.

Not even close (more than a dozen cars stopping along the road in Vermont is a serious traffic jam no doubt).

Moose Makes Crossing

NWF Northeast Regional Center is working to make wildlife crossings safe for people and wildlife as part of a Wildlife Corridor Initiative

The real star of this traffic jam (and press conference) was a beautiful moose that made a “timely” appearance along the road that we were drawing attention to at a press conference just a few hundred yards away.

People were pulling on to the shoulder to take pictures when they saw a local television station reporter and the film crew capturing some great film of this beautiful creature (the TV crew ended up being late for our press conference and we had no idea why they were late until we heard the story after the event ended, so sorry I didn’t get photos of this specific moose).

To show you that I am not stretching the truth, check out this great Burlington Free press article covering the May 18^th event that starts with the true tale.

“Nearly a dozen cars were parked along a stretch of Vermont 100 about noon on Wednesday, their drivers snapping photos or using binoculars to eye a leggy moose grazing in a wetland a few yards from the busy highway.

By happenstance, state officials and wildlife advocates had gathered just up the road to discuss their efforts — and a growing partnership — to address the problem illustrated by the moose: the identification, protection and safety of critical wildlife crossing spots along Vermont’s roads.” (Burlington Free Press).

If the moose visit was not enough for us wildlife lovers, right in the middle of the press conference a friendly woodpecker started noisily pecking away a few yards away as if to remind us that birds also need connected wildlife habitat. Check out these great photos of a bobcat, woodchuck and deer using engineered wildlife crossings.

NWF Northeast Wildlife Corridor Initiative

All this excitement was packed into a wonderful press event where project partners, local community leaders, property owners and the public talked about one of the National Wildlife Federation’s Northeast Regional Center’s key initiatives called “Critical Paths”.

Speakers at the event included Patrick Berry, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife, Sue Minter, Deputy Secretary, Vermont Agency of Transportation, Jesse Mohr, NWF’s wildlife biologist and consultant, Jamey Fidel, VNRC, Forest and Biodiversity Program Director & General Counsel, Rob Hoelscher, Wildlife Biologist, Green Mountain National Forest. For some great photos of the speakers, click here.

The press conference was scheduled to highlight the importance of a key road crossing located on Highway 100 which runs from Interstate 89 in Waterbury north to Stowe, Vermont. See attached map (below) of the crossing.

Curtis Fisher Speaks at Critical Paths Press Conference

Critical Paths is a model project that seeks to maintain natural wildlife migration corridors by identifying critical wildlife road crossings in the State of Vermont. Recently, we have targeted the landscape between the northern Green Mountains and the Northeast Kingdom. The project uses a combination of cutting-edge computer modeling and good old fashion on-site field work to determine where bottlenecks and impermeable crossings exist that can impede the free movement of animals.

We also had a great turnout of local organizations and individuals, including the Stowe Land Trust, Waterbury and Stowe Environmental Commissions, Green Mountain By-Way Committee and local business owners.

This project was made possible with funding from the Wildlife Conservation Society, Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife and generous donations for individuals.

Help support National Wildlife Federation’s work to provide corridors for wildlife >>

This guy was "hanging around" outside our hotel one evening.

For those who have never seen a sloth, let me warn you, they are incredibly cute. As hinted by their name, sloths are very slow, very cautious animals. While some consider them to be lethargic creatures (in fact, the name for sloth in Spanish, perezoso, literally means “lazy”), they are in fact one of the most well adapted species on the planet.

Everything about them – their frightening long claws, their slow to react reflexes, and the extra vertebrae in their neck – helps them thrive in their arboreal habitat.

Of course, what goes up must come down. In the case of sloths, the animals are forced to ground about once a week to relieve themselves or to move to another tree. Watching a sloth move on land is like, well, watching paint dry. As NatGeo explains:

“On land, sloths’ weak hind legs provide no power and their long claws are a hindrance. They must dig into the earth with their front claws and use their strong front legs to pull themselves along, dragging their bellies across the ground.”

While this can be entertaining to watch when they are crossing a small distance in the forest, it is a terrifying thing to watch when they try to cross a road:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Dangerous Crossings

As I learned at the Sloth Sanctuary in Costa Rica, habitat fragmentation by roads and power lines is a threat to the country’s sloths. While the two species of sloth found in Costa Rica (Bradypus variegatus and Choloepus hoffmanni) are not classified as endangered, habitat loss has pushed other species like the jaguar to the brink of extinction.

A coyote crossing a road

In the U.S. it is not sloths and jaguars that suffer because of habitat fragmentation, but rather bears, deer, panthers, moose, salamanders and host of other species. The system of roads and highways in the U.S. often cuts directly through the network of paths wildlife use to access their basic survival needs.

When animals try to cross over a road to gain access to their essential feeding grounds, breeding areas, and shelter, it can be fatal to them and to the humans driving on the road. Making the problem worse is climate change, as even the slightest rise in average temperature can change an entire ecosystem–sometimes forcing wildlife species to move around to find habitat they like better.

To help wildlife find the pathways they need to migrate in latitude and elevation, NWF and partners have launched a program in Vermont called “Critical Paths for Wildlife.” The goals of the project include enhancing migration pathways, strengthening wildlife populations, and reducing animal-vehicle collisions. For anyone who has ever had a collision with wildlife (or even a near miss), it is easy to see how these types of programs are a “win-win” for people and wildlife.

After you read more about the Critical Paths (pdf) program and learn about the threats of habitat loss, check out NWF’s Certified Wildlife Habitat^® program to find out how you create habitat for wildlife in your own yard!

Finally, if you want an overload of sloth cuteness, watch this video.