News archive

2008-12-30 | Wildlife passages

In 2008, Polish government sped up the tempo of designing and building new motorways in Poland. Several sections of A1, A2 and A4 motorways and S-3 and S-69 express roads are already build, documents and projects of other roads will be finalised this and next year, in order to complete the transportation network before the Football Championship Euro 2012 in Poland. This process has a significant impact on the connectivity of important habitats of terrestrial mammals, such as wolves, bears, lynxes, moose, red and roe deer, wild boars, otters, bagders, and many others. New roads disrupt ecological corridors and influence Natura 2000 sites in Poland. In order to save the integrity of Polish Nature, the Association for Nature “Wolf” in 2008 has analysed about 546 km of sections of motorways, express and national roads, and recommended to build 178 wildlife passages for large and medium sized terrestrial mammals: 36 overpasses (40-100 m wide), 31 underpasses for big mammals (at least 4 m height and 18 m width), 56 underpasses for medium mammals (at least 2,5 m height and 6 m width), 40 extended bridges on rivers (with a migration zone for animals on banks) and 15 passes integrated with forest and local roads. Furthermore we negotiated locations of at least 170 culverts for smaller fauna such as stoats, weasels, polecats, martens and amphibians. For several motorway sections the investor has been obligated to conduct a post-investment monitoring of wildlife passages. Recently (December, 2008) a new section of S-69 in the Żywiecki Beskid Mts. (western-most part of the Carpathian Mts.) has been finished. There has been build a large fauna underpass 200 m wide for large carnivores and wild ungulates (see the picture). This underpass was succesfully negotiated with the General Directorate of National Roads and Motorways by AfN Wolf and other local NGOs in 2004. Last several years about 337 fauna passes have been build on Polish roads and railways, most of them were recommended or consulted environmentalists, amongst them AfN Wolf. Altogether 39 of passes are designed exclusively for big or medium animals, 36 are extended bridges and viaducts, 31 are integrated with local roads, rest are small culverts. Our survey of several of them reveals that those designed exclusively for fauna or connected with waterways are intensively used by different species of animals (see the picture). Thus, in 2009 we plan to continue the negotiations with road and railway planners and investors to implement sufficient mitigation measures on transport infrastructure in our country.

2008-12-15 | New wolf article

The scientific article entitled "Density and demography of wolf Canis lupus population in the Western Carpathian Mountains, 1996-2003", prepared by S. Nowak & R. W. Mysłajek from the Association for Nature “Wolf” and B. Jędrzejewska from the Mammal Research Institute Polish Academy of Sciences, has been published in the international journal Folia zoological (No 4/2008). The article describes results of our studies on the population ecology, reproduction and mortality of wolves in the western-most part of the Polish Carpathian Mts.