Wildlife Crossings

Patricia Cramer

Founder of the Wildlife Connectivity Institute

Dr. Patty Cramer grew up loving animals and made a career of protecting wildlife. She began her animal journey first with dog and cat pets, then expanded her animal family to pet raccoons and horses. She majored in wildlife for her bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and PhD. She began down the transportation ecology road when she volunteered in Florida to help other ecologists and Florida Department of Transportation build wildlife crossings to help turtles, snakes, alligators, and many other animals cross safely beneath a highway. That eventually led to her research at the national level on understanding the effects of roads and vehicles on wildlife, what the different states were doing for wildlife, and conducting field research at wildlife crossing structures. She is the founder and director of the Wildlife Connectivity Institute, an organization that helps promote science and actions to reduce wildlife-vehicle conflict and protect and restore wildlife movement across the landscape. Over the past 21 years she has monitored over 100 wildlife crossing structures, which helped and continues to help Departments of Transportation in designing the most effective structures for a variety of wildlife species. Her work with more than 15 different states also focuses on bringing data to transportation professionals so they include wildlife concerns in their road plans. Dr. Cramer is a national leader in wildlife mitigation in the face of roads.