wildlife mortality. Therefore, a careful assessment of railways’ impacts on nature
and of mitigation measures is in order.
Trains are not cars, and railway tracks are not roads. These assertions are
obvious, but they are often ignored when assessing the potential and actual biodiversity impacts of railways, which are normally equated to those of roads. This is
regrettable because roads and railways differ in many respects, which can strongly
influence their impacts. For instance, traffic on railways tends to be less intense than
on roads, but trains often travel at higher speeds than cars. Roads and railways also
have different physical structures, especially in the case of electrified railways,
where overhead lines along the rail tracks can represent an additional source of
impacts. All these differences are likely to affect wildlife responses to roads and
railways, and hence their impacts on, for example, animals’ behavior, mortality, and
landscape connectivity.
A quick survey of the literature shows that studies on the biodiversity impacts of
railways have greatly lagged behind those of roads. This is probably because the road
network is much larger than the railway network, but probably also because the
impacts of roads are more easily observed by ecologists and the general public. For
instance, the safety and economic costs associated with the risk of collision with a wild
or domesticated animal is more easily perceived in a road than in a railway, although
the latter are also very significant: an accident with an animal is likely to go unnoticed
by passengers in a train, with the remarkable exception of the train driver, but the same
will not happen so easily in a car. Even the legal frameworks under which roads and
railways operate can be different, conditioning the way the environment in the vicinity
can be protected and which mitigation measures can be applied.
All these differences add to a number of specificities that clearly set railways
apart from roads, and thus a paradigm shift is needed whereby the impacts of
railways on biodiversity are considered on their own. This book aims at contributing to this shift, filling a gap in the literature about the impacts of transportation on biodiversity. We have brought together 44 researchers from 12
countries, from North and South America to Asia and Europe. We aimed at
combining—in a single volume—the most relevant information that has been
produced on the interactions between railways and wildlife, and to illustrate such
interactions with a set of carefully chosen case studies from around the world. We
have tried to produce a comprehensive volume that should be of interest to
researchers and practitioners alike, including the staff of railway and consultancy
companies that deal with the environmental challenges of railway planning, construction, and operation every day.
Although this book addresses several environmental problems raised by railways, we would like its main message to be one of hope. Indeed, while we expect
societies to keep looking for more efficient means of transportation, we also expect
that efficiency to become ever more synonymous with environmental efficiency, as
societies seek to mitigate impacts or even improve biodiversity. We hope that our
book can help achieve this goal, contributing to the mitigation of the negative
impacts of railways on biodiversity, thereby improving the sustainability and
environmental benefits of this mode of transportation.
viii
Preface
and of mitigation measures is in order.
Trains are not cars, and railway tracks are not roads. These assertions are
obvious, but they are often ignored when assessing the potential and actual biodiversity impacts of railways, which are normally equated to those of roads. This is
regrettable because roads and railways differ in many respects, which can strongly
influence their impacts. For instance, traffic on railways tends to be less intense than
on roads, but trains often travel at higher speeds than cars. Roads and railways also
have different physical structures, especially in the case of electrified railways,
where overhead lines along the rail tracks can represent an additional source of
impacts. All these differences are likely to affect wildlife responses to roads and
railways, and hence their impacts on, for example, animals’ behavior, mortality, and
landscape connectivity.
A quick survey of the literature shows that studies on the biodiversity impacts of
railways have greatly lagged behind those of roads. This is probably because the road
network is much larger than the railway network, but probably also because the
impacts of roads are more easily observed by ecologists and the general public. For
instance, the safety and economic costs associated with the risk of collision with a wild
or domesticated animal is more easily perceived in a road than in a railway, although
the latter are also very significant: an accident with an animal is likely to go unnoticed
by passengers in a train, with the remarkable exception of the train driver, but the same
will not happen so easily in a car. Even the legal frameworks under which roads and
railways operate can be different, conditioning the way the environment in the vicinity
can be protected and which mitigation measures can be applied.
All these differences add to a number of specificities that clearly set railways
apart from roads, and thus a paradigm shift is needed whereby the impacts of
railways on biodiversity are considered on their own. This book aims at contributing to this shift, filling a gap in the literature about the impacts of transportation on biodiversity. We have brought together 44 researchers from 12
countries, from North and South America to Asia and Europe. We aimed at
combining—in a single volume—the most relevant information that has been
produced on the interactions between railways and wildlife, and to illustrate such
interactions with a set of carefully chosen case studies from around the world. We
have tried to produce a comprehensive volume that should be of interest to
researchers and practitioners alike, including the staff of railway and consultancy
companies that deal with the environmental challenges of railway planning, construction, and operation every day.
Although this book addresses several environmental problems raised by railways, we would like its main message to be one of hope. Indeed, while we expect
societies to keep looking for more efficient means of transportation, we also expect
that efficiency to become ever more synonymous with environmental efficiency, as
societies seek to mitigate impacts or even improve biodiversity. We hope that our
book can help achieve this goal, contributing to the mitigation of the negative
impacts of railways on biodiversity, thereby improving the sustainability and
environmental benefits of this mode of transportation.
viii
Preface