GoKawiilProject Reconecta installed eight rope bridges in a municipality in Brazil, and a 15-month study used camera traps to document thousands of arboreal wildlife adapting to new aerial crossings.
Safe road passages enable seed dispersal and gene diversity, reversing the “domino effect” of biodiversity loss that begins when highways split habitats.
Reconecta’s creator, biologist Fernanda Abra, a National Geographic Explorer and winner of the Whitley Award, is now expanding these low-cost conservation tools to other Brazilian biomes and neighboring Suriname.
Brazil’s federal transport department has officially designated the rope bridge design as the recommended national standard for highways to curb the millions of wildlife deaths recorded on roads annually. See All Key Ideas
Around 7 a.m., with dense fog blanketing the landscape, biologist Gabriel Falquetto had already come across several road-killed animals along ES-164 highway in Brazil’s Espírito Santo state. He was on his way to Kaetés Private Natural Heritage Reserve (RPPN), in the Atlantic Forest, where he monitors wildlife and roadkill in the region.
Suddenly, he spotted the lifeless body of a primate on the pavement. It was a buffy-headed marmoset (Callithrix flaviceps), a species listed as critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. An estimated 2,500 individuals remain in the wild, making it one of the world’s most threatened primates.
“It was extremely painful and discouraging,” Falquetto told Mongabay. “We travel through this region every day monitoring wildlife, and we celebrate every encounter with groups of buffy-headed marmosets in the forest.”
“Finding an individual in those conditions brings a feeling of sadness and helplessness. Beyond the loss of that animal, the incident reminds us of the impacts our activities have on biodiversity.”
About 2,900 kilometers (1,800 miles) away, on the road that leads to Alta Floresta, a small Amazon town in the far north of Mato Grosso state, cases like the buffy-headed marmoset’s roadkill have not been recorded since 2024. That year, eight canopy bridges were installed, connecting fragmented forest patches. Camera trap footage revealed that, over 15 months, the aerial wildlife crossings enabled 15,000 safe crossings by arboreal animals — and not a single roadkill.
The bridges are part of a program involving Projeto Reconecta and the municipal government, along with local organizations and business owners who are eager to conserve the unique biodiversity of their town and promote ecotourism, but were alarmed by the growing number of wildlife-vehicle collisions.
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