When somebody talks about roads crossing along natural forest, we could think about the perturbation this may cause to local fauna, especially in the Tropics. At least in Panama, wildlife crossings are not so popular in terms of design, deployment and monitoring. To my knowledge, the few existing ones are aerial and designed keeping in mind the crossing of monkeys or sloths for example. This issue came to my mind on the 3rd of November when I saw a Dactyloa insignis trying to cross an 8 m road traversing Santa Fe National Park, one of the pristine forest in central Panama.
Captured at Santa Fe National Park, Panama
It made three short attempts and looked clumsy when trying to run on the pavement puting him at risk of death, so we caught him and helped him reach the other side of the road.
http://www.mendeley.com/profiles/eric-flores1/
Regards
Eric
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Skip Lazell
Thanks! Looks like an Anolis to me!
sarah
I heartily agree. This is something I’ve talked about many times with friends. I feel all park roads should have frequent structures over the roads so the fauna don’t have to cross in mortal danger. Except for an occasional one built like a real footbridge for larger animals, they could certainly erect many cheaper trellis-like structures to span them, made of wood, wire, or even vines.