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Keeping It Simple:
Easy Ways to Help Wildlife Along Roads

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Creating "bunny condos" where forests join fields

When a terrestrial mitigation project requires border cutting for improved wildlife habitat, it's easy and cheap to construct a brush pile "bunny condo" for small animals. Pennsylvania Department of Transportation biologists have created habitat structures like these on 50 sites in Blair, Huntingdon, and Somerset Counties. To make the tepee-like structures, the biologists combined on-site cut tree limbs, large and small, with stone and brush, stacking them together as a pyramid and topping the pyramid with brush for additional cover. Each structure was built in just one hour and cost only $20. Rabbits, shrews, lizards, skunks, weasels, black snake, wood thrush, and lots of other small mammals, reptiles, and birds have been using the new residences.

Doing the right thing - simply

"Keeping it simple" is more than a concept. It's a commitment.

It means using simple solutions when simple solutions will work.

It involves going beyond "compliance" to identify easy ways of helping wildlife and fish.

It means doing the right thing just because it's the right thing to do and because one has an opportunity to do it.

"We can install ledges in culverts or wood-top rails on deer fences while at the same time pursuing programmatic, region-wide solutions to transportation and wildlife challenges," says FHWA Administrator Rick Capka.

This website highlights more than 100 simple, successful projects from all 50 states and beyond. Each is "easy." Most are low- or no-cost. All benefit wildlife, fish, or their habitats.

Many projects were completed only once - to protect specific species in specific environmental conditions. Others have been repeated numerous times and have become "routine."

Some projects are undertaken regularly because research has proven them effective. Others are new innovations, "best practices," or state-of-the-art strategies.

Some projects - for example, modifying mowing cycles and installing oversized culverts in streams - are common to a large number of states. Others represent a simple solution to a site-specific environmental challenge.

We invite you to explore them all. We encourage you to find out for yourselves, through this website, how transportation professionals are working with others to do the right thing for wildlife and--wherever possible--to do it "simply."