Construction of new extension affects more than just people.
With the shovels striking ground on May 25th, 2009, the highway 410 extension that people have been hearing about for almost three decades has finally begun construction. When it becomes fully operational, it is expected that “traffic on Queen and College Streets will be reduced by almost 50%”, President of the Borough of Lennoxville, Douglas MacAulay stated. While this sounds like great news, and it is for many students who walk to school, building the highway affects more than just pedestrians and cars.
The construction of the highway consists of two phases. In phase one, three interchanges will be built. An interchange is a highway intersection designed to permit traffic to move freely from one road to another without crossing another line of traffic. One will be constructed over Boulevard de l’Université, a second over Belvédère Street, specifically south of Mont Bellevue, and the third one south of Lennoxville at Route 108 and 143. In phase two, the highway will bypass Lennoxville, with a bridge built on the Massawippi River and finally completing itself at Route 108, which is close to Alexander Galt Regional High School.
Whether we like it or not, we all live in habitats. For example, your house is considered something like a human habitat, while an animal habitat can be a marsh, a field or a forest. The highway has already expropriated some people from their habitats and soon it will expropriate or fragment other living organisms from their habitats once it’s finished being built.
The highway acts as a sort of barrier that many types of wildlife cannot cross even if there are certain measures done for them. Some paths are deliberately built in order to let wildlife pass, such as tunnels, overpasses and viaducts, but for the most part, it seems that the highway 410 extension near Lennoxville will be built with no elevation. Even if it was elevated for wildlife pathways, animals still have trouble crossing over because of certain factors such as placement, size, light, moisture, temperature, noise and human interaction.
According to a study made by the Department of Natural Resources, each of these factors requires a different pathway in order to accommodate a particular type of species. For example, according to size, one would think that a bigger passage is better, but some species such as badgers and small mammals prefer smaller passages. On the other hand, smaller passages create temperature differences (think being outside versus inside because of the shade and low air flow) which amphibians try to avoid. A bigger passage would fix the issue but then the issues of small mammals come into play.
Other issues include carnivorous wildlife being drawn away if human interaction is present and wildlife sensitive to noise because of traffic. So far, there is no known highway passage that accommodates every type of wildlife.
Migratory animals suffer the most from this human benefice because they are either in danger of being hit, or they will have a lot of difficulty trying to find their way since they cannot use their original route. This creates the problem of biodiversity in regions with a lot of roads and highways. If migratory animals are enclosed within their reduced habitat because of highways, they cannot travel and populate or repopulate other areas in which there are supposed to be certain animals.
An even bigger strain on the environment is then created because biodiversity is extremely important to the food web, which is also known as the web of life. If different species continue to be secluded from each other, the relationship between predator and prey will diminish, or eventually become non-existent. Flora is also affected by this because when migratory animals travel they help with the spreading of flowers, trees or other plant seeds.
There are a multitude of non-human species on this planet, so when an event or a beneficial situation arises, like this highway construction, try to imagine what kind of impact it would have on other living and non-living things surrounding it. After all, animals and plants help us learn more about our environment and about ourselves, so we should do everything we can to coexist in the best way possible!
