Networking with other similar Life+ projects

It took place on July 3, in Castel San Giorgio (Province of Terni, Umbria), a meeting about the project LIFE11 BIO/IT/072 “LIFEStrade”.

Some members of the project LIFE “One Deer Two Islands” attended the meeting.

In the first part of the meeting the following projects have been presented: Project LIFE “One Deer Two Island”, the LIFE “STRADE” project (http://www.lifestrade.it/index.php/it/), and the “Salviamo l’orso marsicano” project, an organization who works to save the marsican brown bear from extinction (http://www.salviamolorso.it/).

In the second part of the meeting it has been presented a system to reduce the chances of having a wildlife vehicle collision.

The LIFE STRADE project began on 1/1/2013, it involves 3 Regions and 5 Province of Italy: Umbria, Marche and Toscana, and the Province of Perugia, Terni, Siena, Grosseto and Pesaro-Urbino.

The beneficiary coordinator of the project is the “Hunting and Fishing Service of the Umbria Region”  which represents the reference technical structure for the management of wildlife and hunting in the regional territory.

The loss and fragmentation of habitats are two of the most important threats for biodiversity. Unfortunately, the awareness of this problem is still poor among the persons and authorities involved in various different ways in the planning, construction and maintenance of the transport infrastructures.



In fact, the management of the territory should include, among its goals, the implementation of ecological networks, with the aim to maintain or restore the connections among habitat fragments. These critical aspects should be taken into account from the very beginning of the infrastructure planning phase. However, this does not happen: economic aspects related to the cost of the damage compensation are nowadays the main and sometime the only elements that concern public administrators, whereas the impact on biodiversity is only scarcely considered.

In this context the "LIFE STRADE" project was conceived with the aim to draw the attention on the loss of biodiversity due to the traffic collisions with wildlife, and to apply measures that can reduce barrier effect of a transport infrastructure.

The goals of the project are:

• the implementation and large-scale demonstration of a newly developed sophisticated prevention system that simultaneously warns drivers and deters wildlife from crossing roads in critical moments, in an interactive way;
• the development and large-scale demonstration of an integrated management protocol.