Characterizing Movement Patterns and Spatio-temporal Use of Under-road Tunnels by Long-toed Salamanders in Waterton Lakes National Park, Canada

Linnet Lake (Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta) is the breeding site of a population of Long-toed Salamanders (Ambystoma macrodactylum) that has decreased dramatically over the last 15 years, partially due to vehicle-caused mortality occurring on an adjacent road. In May 2008, Parks Canada installed four amphibian tunnels under this road. We installed drift fences to direct salamanders toward tunnel entrances and monitored tunnel use with pitfall traps in 2008 and 2009. We used logistic regressions and Akaike's Information Criterion (AIC) to determine if probability of tunnel use differed among individual salamanders. Salamander road mortality decreased from 10% of the population to