摘要：A steady growth in traffic volumes in industrialized countries with dense human populationsis expected, especially on minor roads. As a consequence, the fragmentation of wildlife populations willincrease dramatically. In human-dominated landscapes, typically minor roads occur in high densities, andanimals encounter them frequently. Traffic calming is a new approach to mitigate negative impacts byreducing traffic volumes and speeds on minor roads at a regional scale. This leads to a distinction betweenroads with low volumes as being part of the traffic-calmed area, whereas roads with bundled traffic arelocated around this area. Within the traffic-calmed area, volumes and speeds can be decreased substantially;this is predicted to decrease the disturbance and mortality risk for animals. Thus far, data on the effects oftraffic calming on wildlife population persistence remain scarce. Using metapopulation theory, we deriveda model to estimate thresholds in the size of traffic-calmed areas and traffic volumes that may allowpersistent populations. Our model suggests that traffic calming largely increases the persistence of roe deerin a landscape with a dense road network. Our modeling results show trade-offs between traffic volumeon roads within the traffic-calmed area and both the area of habitat available for this species in the traffic-calmed area and the size of the traffic-calmed area. These results suggest ways to mitigate the fragmentationof wildlife habitat by road networks and their expected traffic volumes
