Migration Pathways: Wildlife-Vehicle Conflicts and Solutions

Join award-winning Conservation Photographers Josh Asel and Morgan (Mo) Heim for a conversation on what two visual storytellers will go through to document wildlife who try to traverse roads and highways. Fraser Shilling, Co-Director of the UC Davis Road Ecology Center, is going to kick off the presentation with a mental framing of what wildlife-vehicle conflicts and solutions look like in this modern era. Our artificial pathways make travel easy for us, but they have dramatic effects on wildlife movement and landscape connectivity by cutting off crucial corridors. Some wild individuals have a complete aversion to roads, which limits their movement through naturally available landscapes for food, mates, and home territories. Others dare to cross, often leaving bodies and orphans in their wake. Additionally, these accidents cost upwards of 300 million dollars a year to Californians alone. Through their creative imagery, Josh and Morgan hope they inspire people to support under and overpass constructions as wildlife corridors through main roads and highways. The suffering is preventable and we know the cure.