• Korean Journal of Veterinary Service
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.401-409
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• 2010

From 2006 through 2007, the highest need for the most urgent attention in Gangwon-do Wild Animal Rescue Center was wildlifevehicle collisions (WVC). The Korean Ministry of Environment reported 6543 WVC's in 2005 and 5565 cases of WVC's in 2006. In this study, data from the Gangwon-do Wild Animal Rescue Center was utilized to analyze WVC incidents and the movement of wildlife near roadways in Korea. From 2006 through the first half of 2008, the portable GPS device recorded accident location of the injured wildlife. Attempts were made to track and monitor the movements of four raccoon dogs and five Korean water deers near the roads. One raccoon dog and one Korean water deer were successfully tracked and monitored. Their locations were transmitted to cell phones. The amount of WVC's was highest amongst the roads near the forests of Gangwon-do. The devices installed on the nearby roads did not protect the wildlife from WVC's. Results using the CDMA-type GPS collar showed that wildlife often crossed the road even with devices installed to prevent this from crossing roads. This research analyzed the behaviors of different wildlife animals and WVC's. New preventative measures need to be established to avoid roadkill. It is suggested that new streets be built or for an appropriate speed limit be implemented.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.293-307
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• 1998

This study has been divided into two parts, 1) literature review and 2) a case study. Based on literature review and case studies found in Korea and abroad, this study aimed at classifying wildlife passages and establishing their development procedures in order to establish a theoretical ground for the development of wildlife passage as a way to link habitats that have been fragmented by the construction of roads and other developments. The results of the literature review are as follows : 1) Impact of road construction on surrounding ecological environment is found in various aspects. Along with damage of habitats as direct impact, decrease of biodiversity and simplification of species due to limited breeding and movement are cited as possible indirect impact. 2) In order to lessen the impact generated from fragmented habitats, various types of wildlife passage are being developed in Europe and are showing positive results. 3) In Korea, interests on animal passages have been rising recently. The ministry of Environment and local authorities are establishing development plans for the passages. However, practical materials on the usefulness of adoped methods are not available.4) In order to create an effective wildlife passage, decisions have to be made first on basic factors of planning and designing such as ecosystem rehabilitation methods and surveys on wildlife movement routes and habitat environment. Based on this, in a planning and designing stage, the location and type of a passage, size and measures to attract animals and prevent a collision need to be finalized. This should be followed by a series of process of maintenance, management and monitoring after the development. Based on the results of a theoretical study to develop an wildlife passage, Part 2 of this study deals with the results of an experiment through a specific planning and design that includes a process of ecological surveys, site selection, type selection, ecosystem infrastructure, planting design and construction details on an actual study area and presents them as a model project.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.19-27
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• 2008

Ecosystem fragmentation by human intervention breaks down the biosphere habitat. Wildlife corridors connect biosphere habitats to maintain ecosystem continuity and provide animals with connecting routes. In Korea, there are 17 existing wildlife corridors on highways (as of December, 2006. Korea Freeway Corporation). There are 24 highway routes, 2,923km of highway(as of December, 2004. Korea Freeway Corporation). However, wildlife corridors are not enough and roadkill increases every year, so we need to construct additional wildlife corridors on highways. This study proposes a new approach to the location of wildlife corridors on highways, using a comprehensive analysis method for main location elements, and applies it to a study area. First, it examines traditional approaches to location of wildlife corridors through literature review and field study to analyze the present conditions of existing wildlife corridors. Then, it developes a comprehensive analysis method for the location of wildlife corridors. (1) Field investigation : investigate planting, water bodies and so on. (2) Roadkill analysis : roadkill counts, locations, time, and so on. (3) Monitoring : animal traces were surveyed and sensor cameras were installed to determine target species. (4) Simulation for animal movement : most probable wildlife dispersal was simulated by a computer software. (5) A new comprehensive approach overlays all analysis on a map and determines the location of proposed new wildlife corridors. In conclusion, it proposes an over-bridge type wildlife corridor in Dalnaenae Hill (413-414km from Busan) and an underpass type near the entrance to Gwanhyun temple way (415-416km from Busan). This new approach based on roadkill data, computer simulation of wildlife dispersal, monitoring of animals, and site analysis, may contribute to better location of wildlife corridors on highways.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.92-99
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• 2012

Many wildlife habitats have been destroyed and fragmented during the rapid industrialization and urbanization process in Korea. It is essential to connect these fragmented habitats to reduce road-kill of many types of endangered urban wildlife. The site selection for wildlife passages must take into account the behavior of the wildlife species for safe crossing utilizing many artificial barriers in urban areas. This study attempted to identify potential wildlife passage sites for the endangered and protected leopard cats of Gangseo Ecological Park in Seoul, Korea. A space syntax analysis, an analytical technique to objectively evaluate the spatial configurations related to passage selection, found that the integration value represents the accessibility and connectivity of spaces. In this paper, this means that the bigger the integration value, the more frequently the leopard cat passes through. The leopard cats were captured and radio-tracked for 72 hours once a month from March to June of 2009. The ArcGIS and Animal Movement of Hawth Tools were used to analyze the home range and movement paths, and Axwoman 4.0 was used to analyze space syntax. The daily average movement distance was $2.099{\pm}1.08km$. During the survey period, the leopard cats crossed over an urban expressway more than 20 times, running the risk of road-kill. The range of global integration values was 0.458~1.834, while that of the local integration was 0.210~6.061. Five sites that met across the leopard cats' movement routes and roads were selected to measure the local and global integrate values. Among these sites, the higher the integration value, the higher the road-kill possibility. Thus, two of five sites with high global and local integration values were suggested as potential wildlife passage sites for the leopard cats. Now, three tunnel passages are under construction at the suggested sites for which local integration value was highest (LI=4.369). Further studies are scheduled to verify these potential sites as suitable wildlife passages.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.69-80
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• 2021

The new town in Korea, developed as a large-scale housing plan, has created urban ecological corridors to provide habitat and movement routes to wildlife and to promote natural ecological flow. This study aimed to investigate the use of wildlife in 10 ecological corridors in Gwanggyo New Town through camera trap technology and confirm effectiveness by identifying environmental factors affecting the use of wildlife's urban ecological corridors. Our researchers installed 20 unmanned sensor cameras at each the entrance and exit of the ecological corridors, and monitored urban wildlife for 10 weeks. According to the monioring results, the main species in Gwanggyo New Town were identified not only raccons, cats, water deer, korean hare and avain but also magpies, dove, eurasian tree sparrow, ring-necked pheasant, and eurasian jay. The number of uses ecological corridors of urban residents was 801(13.49%), as high as that of urban wildlife (1,140, 19.20%), which was judged to have disturbed the use of ecological corridors by wildlife. However, most dominant species of urban wildlife are nocturnal so that, it was judged that they share home range with urban residents at a time interval. In addition, according to the correlation analysis results between the mammal using rate of the urban ecological corridors and environmental factors(ecological corridor-specific length, ecological corridor-specific width, cover degree, shielding degree, connected green area, separation of movement routes, and presence of streetlights), environmental factors were not statistically significant. However, the more the area of green space connected to ecological corridors, the more increasing the mammal using rate of ecological corridor(r=0.71, p<0.05). Therefore, the area of green space connected to the ecological corridors that is associated with rate of wildlife using corridors should be considered as a priority when developing an urban ecological corridors. In the future, this study will extend the observation period of the ecological corridors and continuously accumulate data by adding the number of observation cameras. Furthermore, it is expected that the results of this study can be used as basic data for the standards for urban ecological corridors installation.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.185-198
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• 2016

Korea has put in significant efforts to increase the number of wildlife crossings between fragmented habitats to prevent loss of biodiversity and to encourage the habitat connectivity in Korea. However, there is a lack of biological data on the effect of vegetation structure in these wildlife crossings and guidelines for design and management of wildlife crossing structures in Korea. Therefore, we selected ground beetle assemblages as model organisms to compare the effect of vegetation structure in wildlife crossings, i.e. bare ground- and shrub-type corridors, in agro-forested landscapes. For this study, 4,207 ground beetles belonging to 33 species were collected through pitfall trapping along the northern forest-corridor-southern forest transects from late April to early September in 2015. Dominant species, abundance, and species richness of ground beetles were significantly higher in the shrub-type corridors than the bare ground-type corridors. Also, the species composition of bare ground-type corridor was significantly different compared to the other habitats such as shrub-type corridor and forests. Similarly, environmental variables were also influenced by vegetation management regimes or trap locations. Collectively, our study clearly indicates that the movement of forest associated ground beetles between forest patches can increase as the vegetation in wildlife crossings becomes complex. Although further studies are needed to verify this, there are indications that the current wildlife crossings that comply with the guidelines may be unfriendly to the movement of ground dwelling arthropods as well as ground beetles. To enhance the ecological function of wildlife crossings, the guidelines need to be rectified as follows: 1) Shrubs or trees should be planted along the corridor verges to provide refuge or movement paths for small mammals and ground dwelling arthropods, and 2) Open spaces should be provided in the middle of the corridors to be used as a path for the movement of large mammals.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.337-346
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• 2023

Although wildlife bridge are built as a way to reduce habitat fragmentation caused by road construction, there is still a lot of debate about their effectiveness. Monitoring methods such as footprint traps and camera traps are used evaluate the effectiveness of wildlife bridge, but there is a limit to evaluate of effectiveness. In this study, the degree of use the wildlfe bridge was surveyed by striped field mouse that is likely use the wildlife bridge and surrounding as a habitat with capture-mark-recapture method.(Apodemus agraius). The distance and route of movement were identified by connecting the capture points, and the environmental factors on the use of the wildlife bridge implemented a generalized linear model(GLM) with the capture number of captured as a dependent variable. Consequently of capture, no individuals crossing the wildlife bridge, striped field mouse use the wildlife bridge as a habitat.The environmental factors affecting the use of mice were vegetation cover(1~2m, 2~8m, over 8m), vegetation construction, maximum diameter at breast height were positively correlated and slope was nagatively correlated. In conclusion, it is expected that the effectiveness of the wildlife bridge will be further improved by planting shrubs and trees and preventing high slope and cut slope increasing the utilization of the rat, such as being used as a food source in the ecosystem.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.1-14
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• 2016

With the continuous expansion of highway network and its traffics, neighboring wildlife habitats are splitted into smaller and more isolated patches. The infrastructures contribute to the wildlife-vehicle collision by creating barriers to animal movement. This kinds of traffic accidents are dangerous factors to the drivers' safety and the facilities on the highway as well as to the wildlife themselves. One of the most common ways to prevent habitat fragmentation are fauna crossings and fences. The cost of the mitigation measures to prevent wildlife-vehicle collision could be monetized. However their economic benefits are difficult to be measured. Using contingent valuation method, this study tries to estimate the economic valuation of wildlife collision prevention projects on the Korean highways. The result shows that 43.88% of Korean household had the positive willingness pay to the projects. Moreover, we found that the recognition of the project or the favourable attitude to the environmental issues could raise the willingness-to-pay. Therefore, active public relation on the project could make the friendly public opinion and increase the number of the household which has the positive willingness-to-pay on the project.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.133-141
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• 2008

The loss, alteration, and fragmentation of habitat have led to a reduction of biodiversity. The growing awareness of the negative effects of habitat fragmentation on natural systems has resulted in conservation strategy that is concerned with not only population and habitat level but also ecosystem and landscape level. Especially, ecological network to link core areas or major habitat patches is one of the most important issues. Recently, landscape connectivity is increasingly used in decision making for fragmented landscape management in order to conserve the biodiversity in the regional scale. The objective of this study was to find potential forest as a ecological corridor in Go-yang city, Gyung-gi province using cost-distance modelling method that can measure connectivity based on animal movement. 'Least cost-distance' modelling based on functional connectivity can be useful to establish ecological network and biodiversity conservation plan. This method calculates the distance modified with the cost to move between habitat patches based on detailed geographical information on the landscape as well as behavioural aspects of the animal movement. The least cost-distance models are based on two biologically assumptions: (1) dispersers have complete knowledge of their surroundings, and (2) they do select the least cost route from this information. As a result of this study, we can find wildlife moving route for biodiversity conservation. The result is very useful for long-term aspect of biodiversity conservation plan in regional scale, because this is reflection of geographical information and behavioural aspects of the animal movement.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.292-302
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• 2019

This study conducted a hierarchy analysis based on a questionnaire survey of experts in park management, ecosystem survey, and ecological environment planning to establish evaluation items and a weighing value of each item to develop ecological connectivity in Baekdudaegan mountain range neighboring the Taebaeksan National Park using the AHP approach. We selected four high-level evaluation indexes and 13 low-level evaluation indexes through literature review and interview with the people in the field and calculated weights for each question through the consistency analysis. The analysis showed that increasing the ecological value was the most important item with the index of 0.474 among the high-level evaluation items, followed by the mitigation of human-nature conflict at 0.247, participation by local residents at 0.165, and the economic perspective at 0.114. Among the low-level evaluation indexes, the movement route of wildlife was the highest at 0.116, followed by the connectivity of landscape ecological patch at 0.112, and functional habitat at 0.099. The comparison of the evaluation items in each working group and the weight factors showed that the movement route of wildlife was the most important at 0.116 in ecosystem survey, the functional habitat was the most important at 0.110 in park management, and the regional preservation and distribution of resources was the most important at 0.123 in ecological environment planning. The results of this study is useful to identify evaluation items for developing ecological network with a diverse source of the actual environmental data in the Taebaeksan National Park.