Moving Wildlife

Moving Wildlife: A Vision for the Successful Deployment of $1.35 billion to Restore Wildlife Migrations

By Leanne Spaulding, Wildlife Connectivity Program Manager

Transportation infrastructure has improved mobility for millions of people, goods, and services. It has also led to unintentional yet devastating limitations for wildlife migration and biodiversity. Now there is an opportunity to undo some of the accidental damage. Rapid, equitable, and harmonized deployment of Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act authorized grant funding administered by several federal agencies for wildlife connectivity and conservation projects such as culvert replacement, wildlife crossings, dam removal, and river and habitat restoration is key. This paper offers several recommendations to expedite government program delivery and optimize connectivity benefits at the landscape ecology scale using these once-in-a-lifetime federal resources.