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Keeping It Simple:
Easy Ways to Help Wildlife Along Roads

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Small sign helps protect wildlife during routine construction and maintenance work

It can be a tough job identifying environmentally sensitive areas (ESAs) and the habitats of protected species, especially if the species are hard to see. To make it easier for construction and maintenance crews to recognize these areas, the Georgia Department of Transportation installs permanent ESA signs on project sites where there are threatened or endangered plant communities or wildlife species. Notations on construction plans prevent highway contractors from staging and storing equipment on these sites or conducting certain undesired activities - for example, spraying herbicides or clearing vegetation. The signage has particularly benefited such protected fish and mussel species as the blue shiner, the Conasauga logperch, the goldline darter, the amber darter, and the upland combshell mussel.

Doing the right thing - simply

"Keeping it simple" is more than a concept. It's a commitment.

It means using simple solutions when simple solutions will work.

It involves going beyond "compliance" to identify easy ways of helping wildlife and fish.

It means doing the right thing just because it's the right thing to do and because one has an opportunity to do it.

"We can build bat roosts in pre-fab bridge concrete or extend the right-of-way fence to create elkproof fencing," says April Marchese, Director of FHWA's Office of Natural and Human Environment. "Simple measures like these link habitats, reduce roadkill, and save taxpayer dollars."

This website highlights more than 100 simple, successful projects from all 50 states and beyond. Each is "easy." Most are low- or no-cost. All benefit wildlife, fish, or their habitats.

Many projects were completed only once - to protect specific species in specific environmental conditions. Others have been repeated numerous times and have become "routine."

Some projects are undertaken regularly because research has proven them effective. Others are new innovations, "best practices," or state-of-the-art strategies.

Some projects - for example, modifying mowing cycles and installing oversized culverts in streams - are common to a large number of states. Others represent a simple solution to a site-specific environmental challenge.

We invite you to explore them all. We encourage you to find out for yourselves, through this website, how transportation professionals are working with others to do the right thing for wildlife and--wherever possible--to do it "simply."