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Keeping It Simple:
Easy Ways to Help Wildlife Along Roads

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Donated signposts help protect migrating turtles

"Beachfront lights out May through October. Let's save the sea turtles."

The South Carolina Department of Transportation donated the steel posts for these U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service signs posted all along South Carolina's southern coastline. The colorful 24-inch by 18-inch signs urge visitors and vacationers to dim the lights on the porches and interiors of their beachfront rental homes so the lights won't disrupt the migration behavior of endangered loggerhead sea turtles. Since newly hatched loggerheads depend on the moon to find their way to the ocean, lights on the beach can disrupt their innate orientation, causing them to move inland where they may be attacked by predators or get caught in weeds or behind dunes. Thanks to the signs, fewer hatchlings are mistakenly migrating inland instead of back into the water.

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 build bat roosts in pre-fab bridge concrete or extend the right-of-way fence to create elkproof fencing," says April Marchese, Director of FHWA's Office of Natural and Human Environment. "Simple measures like these link habitats, reduce roadkill, and save taxpayer dollars."

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."