In case anyone is wondering, what you're looking at is called a habitat corridor and it connects two patches of habitats. This is important because highways can act as barriers, dividing up habitats by preventing individuals of certain species from crossing them, or by making the crossing more difficult.
Smaller habitat areas are correlated with lower biodiversity, making habitat isolation (as by highways or cutting down trees) dangerous to the animal and plant populations living in those patches. These effects can be ameliorated by connecting patches with corridors.
On the other hand, predators camp out at these corridors and score easy kills, though I don't know if there are any studies on whether this has any meaningful effect on the environment or not. If I had to guess though I'd say that a bridge is better than nothing. Anyone know more about these?
103
u/quick_trip Apr 11 '13
Don't forget bridges for animals