Research overview: cost-effectiveness of wildlife crossing infrastructure

Wildlife crossings and fencing are expensive, and this overview examines how their costs are weighed against benefits in road-mitigation planning. Benefits include reduced wildlife-vehicle collisions, which carry their own human safety and economic costs, alongside the conservation value of restored connectivity for species like pumas. The overview discusses analyses that compare the upfront cost of crossings and fencing against the avoided costs of collisions and the harder-to-monetize value of preventing population isolation and genetic decline. For high-value, imperiled felid populations, even costly structures can be justified by their role in averting local extinction. The overview frames cost-effectiveness analysis as a tool for prioritizing where limited mitigation funds yield the greatest return, helping move crossings from symbolic gestures to strategically sited investments grounded in movement science.