Interview with Mel McGregor (Griffith university - Australia)
IENE 2016 conference (Lyon,France)
The road barrier effect on flying vertebrates has been consistently underestimated, presumably because of the assumption that flight confers the capacity to overcome this challenge. Recent studies, however, have demonstrated that many forest dwelling birds and microbats may be reluctant to traverse the space above the road. One effective solution to this impediment is the installation of vegetated fauna overpasses which provide contiguous habitat connections across even large roads. This study is the first to demonstrate that vegetated fauna overpasses can facilitate activity and provide natural habitat continuity for a diverse microbat community.
