This story is part of our series, Wild Pennsylvania. Check out all of our stories here.
Pennsylvania is looking to give more support to the state’s wildlife. Last year House Resolution 87 passed with bipartisan support in the state legislature. It called for a report on the use of wildlife corridors to protect wildlife and keep people and animals safe from collisions. The report was released by the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee in June.
It’s something Sally Sims has been advocating for as a consultant and cofounder of Pennsylvania Habitat Connectivity, which coalesced in Harrisburg about 5 years ago. “We are very loosely organized. We’re not a 501(c)(3) [nonprofit],” Sims said. “We do advocacy work and we also help lawmakers understand the issue and try to create, facilitate areas for dialog among the players that are interested in advancing habitat connectivity.”
The Allegheny Front’s Kara Holsopple spoke with Sims to get her take on the new report.
Listen to the conversation:
Kara Holsopple: First, what is habitat connectivity?
Sally Sims: This is a conservation principle that’s been around for a while. It is that it’s important for species, animals, plants, fish, reptiles to have a habitat that’s connected so they can get their food, they can mate, they have areas to rest. They have areas to move and migrate, either during the day or across seasons.
It’s become a really key conservation strategy within the last 10 to 15 years, especially in response to climate change, in response to increased residential and commercial development pressure, and also disease and invasive species. The idea to make sure that the landscape is permeable, meaning that animals can move, whether they’re being bobcats or whether they’re box turtles.
Kara Holsopple: The report looked at conservation corridors. How do wildlife corridors benefit animals? Or does the lack of them hurt animals?
Sally Sims: Yes, fragmented habitats. Species can’t find each other, so their pool of mates is significantly reduced. Sometimes, that means no babies. Sometimes, that means genetic inbreeding. It disrupts the web of other species that rely on those species, too.
Kara Holsopple: You mentioned climate change. Can you say a little bit about how climate change impacts connectivity?
Sally Sims: Climate change is definitely affecting the temperature, the precipitation level, all those weather factors that different species have, all their niches in their comfort level of where they want to live.
So, for instance, if there’s a lot of drought, then aquatic species can’t move around as much. Mussels have a very complicated relationship with fish in the streams to propagate themselves. Also, there are amphibians and reptiles that move across the landscape. If there’s more fire or there’s more flooding, the particular parts of the ecosystem that they need to survive may not be available.
Kara Holsopple: What do wildlife corridors look like on the ground?
Sally Sims: A lot of people think of the highway overpasses that connect a protected state forest with another area that might have a conservation easement on it, and that’s certainly one thing.
It can look like an actual structure. It could be a culvert, or it could be a bridge. It could also just be a series of connected lands that have an understanding that when these animals pass through, there’s going to be space for them to do that, and there’s going to be relationships with people that will allow them to do that.
Kara Holsopple: I’ve also seen fencing that can direct animals away from roads or places where we don’t want them and to connection points or safe passages.
Sally Sims: Yes, those are very important. Those are often put into effect when channeling the animals to go over certain road structures.
There’s actually a really interesting example that’s going on down in North Carolina, where the red wolf is being recovered, and they have done enough research to understand exactly where the birthing area is and where the troubles are, and they can pinpoint where an overland fencing and bridge structure would do the most good.
In our state, we have bobcats. They’re working on connectivity between New Jersey and Pennsylvania. We have whitetail deer, obviously, another issue with vehicle collisions with wildlife. That is it’s a huge issue and a huge economic problem and a huge human problem and animal problem.
Kara Holsopple: According to the report, in 2022, 4,500 deer-related and 207 other animal-related, what they call wildlife-vehicle collisions were reported to PennDOT. In that year, seven people died. What does the report tell us about the reporting of collisions, and how can that be avoided?
Sally Sims: Basically, we have much more data that we need to get. There is incomplete data. Not everyone who’s in an accident reports it, and the insurance companies don’t have complete data on it, and PennDOT doesn’t have complete data on it. So there are recommendations in the report about increasing ways of reporting that so that that can be taken into consideration as part of a bigger picture of setting priorities across the landscape.
Kara Holsopple: There are a lot of recommendations in the report, but for you, what are the most important?
Sally Sims: We’ve been working as a group, talking to the main natural resource agencies that have conservation of the precious resources under their care: DCNR (the Conservation and Natural Resources Department), the Fish and Boat Commission, and the Game Commission.
In a lot of states that are advancing on connectivity, they have all of those functions in one agency, and it’s really easy to get them all together and say, okay, where are the priority areas for wildlife? In many states, what has happened is that group gets together with their Department of Transportation and with some other groups and puts together a prioritization plan.
That hasn’t happened in Pennsylvania, and that’s what we’re in the most need of happening is having a habitat prioritization and corridor implementation plan that’s put together by the agencies working together, because they’re already doing several important, successful programs that include connectivity in terms of floodplain restoration and forest management.
Kara Holsopple: And there are some wildlife corridors that have already been established in the state?
Sally Sims: Right. But the greatest takeaway that I get is the one that encourages the governor to convene an ecological connectivity working group with those key natural resources agency and their partners, such as the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. This report gives us a background and a context. There’s a lot of information out there, but really what happens is people need to sit down at a map and think about the kind of priorities that they want to have.
I think that’s something that’s sometimes not really covered in conservation. People think of conservation as science, and then people make decisions. Well, conservation is values, too. And there are a lot of values that are the same across all these agencies.
Pennsylvania Habitat Connectivity has been working with outdoors groups, hunting groups, conservation groups, and other people, too. There is an interest in making it easier for wildlife to survive because people understand the pressures that are out there, and then they’re seeing all the road mortality, too.
So I think the most important thing to focus on is getting that high-level coordination and prioritization and agreeing on values going forward. That is kind of the main thing because we know that the agencies are interested in working together and strategizing their programs, but they need a structure to do that, which doesn’t exist in Pennsylvania. It also puts them in a better position to access federal dollars.
Sally Sims is the cofounder of Pennsylvania Habitat Connectivity.
