Effects of rural roads on songbirds

 Roads rank among the most important drivers of habitat degradation. Many remote areas of the planet are crisscrossed by hundreds of thousands of km of little-used dirt roads that are thought to have little impact on wildlife. This study, lead by M. Dietz, investigated the effects of a remote, seasonally used, dirt road in the Colorado Rockies on the reproduction of a population of white-crowned sparrows (Zonotrichia oriantha). Unexpectedly, we found that even in this remote location, distance of a bird’s nest to the road has a strong impact on the probability of the birds successfully raising their young. While building a nest in the general area of a road can actually have some benefits for bird parents (because some nest predators avoid roads), nesting too close to the road invites disaster. Birds that nest closer than approx. 30m from the road appear to become so stressed by the road traffic that they eventually abandon their nests. This study is the first to show that even low-traffic, low-speed roads can have important impacts on bird species that are not thought to be particularly sensitive to human activities (see: Dietz et al. 2013).