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Keeping It Simple:
Easy Ways to Help Wildlife Along Roads

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Bird-deterrent netting protects swallows from bridge-construction work

Barn swallows live in the tidal marshes surrounding Humpback Bridge - a bridge crossing Muddy Branch creek near Leipsic, Delaware. Delaware Department of Transportation maintenance workers weren't surprised to find 18 barn-swallow nests underneath the bridge when they inspected it at the end of the nesting season before work began to replace the old bridge with a new one. To keep barn swallows out of harm's way both before and during construction, they installed black polyethylene netting specifically sized to deter barn swallows under the bridge and around the piers, attaching the netting with a cable and lug rings and stretching it taut to prevent sagging. Installing the netting took just two days and cost $3,000 - far less than the manufacturer's installation charge. The swallows were successfully kept away while the old bridge was being replaced, and now they're back, nesting under the bridge as before.

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."