RE-EVALUATING THE NEEDS FOR ANIMAL PASSAGES IN ISRAEL: TOWARDS A LONG-TERM MONITORING SCHEME

Centralized planning framework, accelerating habitat fragmentation and growing awareness to animal-transportation issues in Israel have lead to increased demand for ecological considerations during road construction and maintenance. Several governmental bodies have upgraded their requests regarding fauna passages and monitoring, with substantial budget implications. Planning and management decisions on local and regional scale need to consider changes and adaptations required with time. Current project-oriented planning and budgeting make it difficult to maintain a regional, long-term view. Most existing fauna passages were not specifically designed for animals. Guidelines for animal passages are derived from European countries, which differ from Israel in climatic-ecological aspects and in some human activity patterns. Adapting these guidelines to local conditions in order to rationalize and optimize planning, expenditure and results requires more accurate reevaluation of animal needs, testing alternative solutions on small scale before turning to large-scale expensive modifications, and responding to temporal changes