NEW HAMPSHIRE, U.S. — It’s a mild March night in Keene, New Hampshire, and the salamander brigade is out in full force. A constellation of flashlight beams wink and flash along a dark street, as rain falls onto the jackets and reflective vests of the assembled crew. Tonight, a veritable army of amphibians is trekking from the upland forests, where they spend the winter, toward the wetlands where they breed. In their path lies a two-lane asphalt road, North Lincoln Street. Animals need to move for a variety of reasons, but in a world crosshatched by motorways, that’s not an easy task. Each spring in Keene, wood frogs (Lithobates sylvaticus), spring peepers (Pseudacris crucifer), red-backed salamanders (Plethodon cinereus) and spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum) must navigate roads to reach their natal spawning grounds. This particular road in Keene is routinely closed to cars during nights of amphibian migration. At other crossing sites in the region, volunteers are the only thing standing between these slow-moving critters and the danger posed by passing traffic. Carrying animals across the road by hand gets the job done, but it’s limited by human availability and energy. The hope has always been that “crossing brigades are the first step, not the last step,” said Brett Amy Thelen, who organizes these efforts and serves as science director for the Harris Center for Conservation Education, a regional nonprofit. That hope is being realized: Thelen and her salamander squadron are at the center of a new initiative to build small…This article was originally published on Mongabay

BRITISH COLUMBIA, Canada — On a sunny Thursday in May, Kent Kebe had to scrape yet another bighorn sheep carcass off Highway 93/95 running through Radium, British Columbia. The necropsy confirmed what Kebe, the village’s protective service manager, already knew: A car collision killed the ram. Roadkill deaths hit this community hard. Residents love their sheep so much that the village center sports a huge steel sculpture of sheep horns that stands roughly 12-meters- (39-foot-) wide and 6-meters- (19-feet-) tall. The Big Horn Cafe on the main drag features artwork of bighorn rams and serves custom-blended “Headbanger tea.” In the 1990s, about 350 bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) milled around, drawn to the golf course and the grasses along the highway. “It’s like a candy store for them,” Kebe says. But by 2022, the herd’s numbers had dwindled to 140. While some sheep died from natural causes, vehicle collisions played a big role in the death toll. “There’s a tension where the sheep are the mascots of the village, but the traffic is killing them,” says wildlife scientist Clayton Lamb, who works with the nonprofit Biodiversity Pathways and the University of British Columbia. He helped bring attention to the issue in 2022. Habitat loss is a major threat to species, but highways, railways and towns impact how animals move to eat, meet and mate — and that can endanger their survival. A 2025 review in the journal Science warned that while the world aims to protect 30% of the planet by…This article was originally published on Mongabay