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Tolling Points

Highway and Interstate Operators Can Cut Costs, Save Pollinators, Florida Study Shows

By: 
Bill Cramer
Category: 
Stories

Just in time for spring, the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences is reporting that tolling authorities and other highway agencies can reduce roadside mowing costs while preserving vital habitat for pollinators like butterflies and bees.

“Our new study will provide mowing recommendations for FDOT [the Florida Department of Transportation],” said associate professor of entomology Jaret Daniels, after earlier research found that sustainable management practices like reduced mowing could cut right-of-way vegetation management costs by 30%.

“FDOT is committed to biodiversity conservation and ecological services that roadsides can offer,” Daniels explained. “They additionally have a strong commitment to pollinator and monarch butterfly conservation.”

A Double Bottom Line

The UF/IFAS research points to another one of those marvellous moments when doing the right thing environmentally contributes to an agency’s financial bottom line.

“The best-known pollinators are bees, but UF/IFAS researchers are studying butterflies as roadside pollinators,” the university reported earlier this month. “Among their other benefits, butterflies serve as indicator organisms. They signal when environmental changes are affecting ecosystems before the effects are apparent to humans or many other organisms.”

As for FDOT, officials “appreciate the results because they want to create an environment that fosters biodiversity and conserves critical ecosystem services like pollination,” the university release noted, though a scaled-back mowing schedule won’t mean an end to vegetation management.

“People sometimes complain to FDOT when roadsides become overgrown with grass and flowers,” so “the department must mow to maintain aesthetics and clear an area for safety.”

Even so, “mowing less frequently has the potential to accomplish FDOT’s objectives and enhance the abundance of floral resources,” Daniels said.

Great Minds Think Alike

This isn’t the first we’ve heard of highway agencies taking a moment to think about pollinators. Last year, Tolling Points reported that the Illinois Tollway had teamed up with the Natural Resources Defense Council to plant milkweed along 286 miles of roadway, including suburban areas of interstate highways 88, 90, and 294.

The monarch butterfly is Illinois’ state insect, and milkweed “is the only plant on which monarchs will lay their eggs. It's also what the caterpillar eats for about two weeks until it's ready to form a chrysalis before emerging as a butterfly,” the Chicago Tribune explained at the time.

But monarch populations are dwindling, under threat from widespread use of the herbicide glyphosate, also known as Roundup, NRDC Executive Director Peter Lehner wrote. “That's why [NRDC is] working with the toll board to help restore Illinois' once-plentiful monarch habitat, not only along roadsides but also on wetland sites the authority helps maintain.”

It’s good to see that thinking spread. Pollinators support much of the food system we take for granted (and that accounts for a big chunk of the daily freight traffic on our roads), and the cost savings make this an easy way for toll operators to give back.

For more great ideas on toll road management, register today for IBTTA’s 2016 Maintenance and Roadway Operations Workshop, May 15-17, 2016 in Ne

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