Impact of noise barriers on birds. A case study along a Tuscany highway

Abstract

One of the most harmful impact that the presence of an infrastructure can cause on birds is the death by direct collisions, both against the vehicles passing and the related structures, like noise barriers. Despite the great concern raised in the last years about the entity of this issue, little has been made to avoid or mitigate this problem. In this short-note we report a case study on the impact of these structures on birds along a highway in Tuscany. Our findings seem to stress the presence of a significance effect in terms of numbers of both collisions and of species involved.