Vasylyna Stakh
Other projects
Transport infrastructure, mainly automobile roads, is one of the significant disturbing factors in functioning of amphibian populations. Roads fragmenting the environment have negative impact upon the level of amphibian activity leading to the animal-road conflict. Amphibians being globally endangered are very sensitive to such type of influence as it complicates their migrations. It causes high mortality, decreases population stability, etc. So, the main project goal is to give the biological estimation to the level of road and transportation impact on the condition of amphibian populations recommending mitigation measures including ecological education of the target groups of people (lectures, printing brochures).
The project team is going to check the mortality of amphibians on the automobile roads of Transcarpathian province to ascertain their qualitative and quantitative composition. One of the important results of the work will be visualization (QGIS maps) of amphibian mortality on the roads of the province. It will give us an opportunity to establish the modern status of the problem and will be the good basement for starting different conservation actions focused on the decreasing of amphibian mortality on the roads in particular and animal-road conflict in total. We are planning also to prepare and publish short field-key on amphibian remnants crushed by vehicles on the roads and republish our brochure with general information about the essence of the conflict as well. It will have not only scientific, cognitive, but also didactic value.
In parallel, we are also going to organize eco-educative actions involving schoolchildren, students, nature reserve and national nature parks staffs and the representatives of local communities into them. Such a combination will facilitate the comprehension of the problem and let the target groups of people get more information about the role of amphibians in the ecosystem, their life-cycles, migrations, conservation efforts and mitigation measures.
Our previous work gave us a possibility to build a team, approve the field methods, and let us step up the estimation criteria of the road impact on the amphibian populations. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out the complex research of amphibian mortality on the roads of Transcarpathian province, compare the population conditions, establish the traffic intensity, choose model road sections to investigate seasonal peculiarities of amphibian migration dynamics, and propose some mitigation measures. Eco-education as an important part of the project will provide some lectures on the topic for schoolchildren in local schools, local authorities and Uzhanskyy National Nature Park staff.