KUALA LUMPUR – Installing wildlife crossings is not the only solution to reducing wildlife-related roadkill, environmentalists say.
Speaking to Scoop recently, Wildlife Conservation Society Malaysia Programme country director Mark Rayan Darmaraj expressed the necessity of conducting a thorough survey on wildlife zones and the need to construct suitable wildlife crossings before implementing such measures.
“First and foremost, in relation to new roads being built, the best thing we can do is to make sure that we don’t fragment contiguous forested areas and should align or realign roads to avoid bisecting these areas.
“If there is absolutely no way to prevent this infrastructure from bisecting these forested areas, then allocating and incorporating enough budget to identify locations and enabling as many wildlife crossings to be built to facilitate safer movement for wildlife to cross roads needs to be prioritised.
“So, there is definitely value in constructing wildlife crossings, which are also called viaducts, if they are well-planned and the location is based on data on wildlife presence or movement,” he said.
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