First, road management and permitting agencies need to move beyond asking consultants or researchers to simply record use or measure rate of crossing by fauna, to insisting on evaluations of selleck screening library whether the crossing

structure has mitigated the effect of the road on the wildlife population. Second, researchers need to be involved in the design of the evaluation programs from the earliest stages of the road or road mitigation project. The researchers need to inform the road agency of the essential components of good study design and the need for (1) before data, (2) appropriate mitigation and control sites, (3) sufficient site replication, and (4) appropriate spatial scale and time-frame for evaluation. Finally, the importance and benefits of road mitigation measures should be better communicated to all stakeholders. Only then can the support and cooperation, RG7112 which is indispensable for studies that are characterized by long-term monitoring efforts, GSK923295 be achieved. Although the set of guidelines we have presented is ambitious, we are convinced that they are necessary to improve our understanding of the effectiveness of road mitigation measures. Acknowledgments The initial workshop, held at castle Geulzicht in The Netherlands, and the work on the paper by the first author have been financed by the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (Policy Support Research, BO-02-005 Spatial Quality National Ecological

Network) and the Ministry of Transport and Public Works. Co-finances were received by the research program KennisBasis (Theme 1: Planning and Management of Green and Blue Space). Co-author van der Ree is supported by The Baker Foundation. Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and

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