Scientists Seek to Mitigate Ecological Damage From Roads - NYTimes.com

• There are some four million miles of roads affecting 20 percent of the country, and in the last 10 years the new field of road ecology has emerged to study the many impacts of roads, and how to mitigate the damage.

  “Roads are the largest human artifact on the planet,” said Dr. Richard T. T. Forman, a professor of landscape ecology at Harvard, who brought road ecology from Europe to the United States. He is the editor of the definitive text on the field, “Road Ecology: Science and Solutions” (Island Press, 2003).

  One of the first projects in this country to ameliorate the effect of roads was on Florida’s Alligator Alley on I-75. A series of 24 underpasses restored water flow to the Everglades and allowed wildlife to safely migrate. The changes reduced the mortality of Florida panthers — of which there were only around 50 — from 4 per year to 1.5.

  Now, the number of ecologically sensitive road designs built or under way in the country is in the hundreds. In Amherst, Mass., salamanders emerge from hibernation in the mud on the first rainy night of April. “They come up and go screaming across the street to their breeding pond and have an orgy,” Dr. Forman said.