Faunapassager : How animals cross roads

Sammanfattning: A fauna passage is a way for animals to cross roads separated from the traffic. In Sweden, there are an unknown number of passages with different functions and appearances. These passages would, with the question “Which fauna passages can be found in Sweden, and how well do they work?” as a base, be compiled in a comparable way. This would be done with a number of questions asked to the different regions of Vägverket. The essay was delimited to only include ecoducts, animal bridges, landscape bridges, animal gates, tunnels for small animals, shore passages and fence openings. Most of Vägverkets regions had poor documentation of their passages and lacked the time to improve it. Most questions could only be answered for the region in general, and not for every passage, which forced us to change our way of account. In the end, most of the questions were answered by every region, even though it had not seemed possible earlier. Almost all regions also accounted for all their pas-sages in tables and with selected pictures to illustrate the passages. The compiled result showed that there were no ecoducts in the country and the passages directed to otter was clearly dominating. There were only a few passages constructed for larger animals, such as deer and elk, but those existing were better documented and followed up, than the smaller passages. It is likely that a lot of animals use regular road bridges and tunnels, but there is no documentation of this. The smaller passages are often planned in a simplified way, sometimes only through discussion in field. This often gave a fully sufficient and functional result, but there are examples of passages which did not function alright due to simplify-ing and inadequate planning. The passages varied in shape in the different regions, which all seemed to prefer certain kinds. It was not clear from the basic data if this depended on climate dif-ferences between the regions, or if it simply was a question of taste.