Other Resources

This study surveyed residents living by utility ROWs in the Chicago, Illinois USA metropolitan area to determine if residents prefer utility ROWs managed as lawn over those managed as native prairies or allowed to grow freely with only woody vegetation removed (“old-field ROWs”) and found that respondents did not prefer mowed over prairie or old-field ROWs.

This study shows that both old-field- and prairie-managed powerline corridors add habitat value to Midwestern U.S. suburban landscapes by providing alternative habitat types that support many species.

This paper documents the development and testing of a protocol for rapid assessment of roadside rights-of-way that aids roadside managers with identifying potential locations for monarch habitat along roadsides and with evaluating the effects of management activities. The researchers found that their protocol provided similar data as the more intensive protocol regarding milkweed densities, nectar plant species richness, and monarch use of sites, and that high habitat values roadside rights-of-way confirm the potential of such habitat for pollinator and monarch conservation.

This paper prepared by the University of Maine is a review of peer-reviewed academic and non-peer reviewed gray literature describing ROW management practices and their effects on pollinator populations, focusing on applications of these practices in landscapes similar to those found in Maine and the northeast United States; that is, landscapes that are heavily forested and interspersed with agriculture, developed areas, and wetlands.

This report by the Electric Power Research Institute and Environmental Policy Innovation Center helps electric power and other companies to better understand the factors that motivate companies to pursue voluntary species conservation and how to lower the barriers to voluntary conservation under the U.S Endangered Species Act (ESA). 

This review outlines the current depth and breadth of investigation into the conservation and management of pollinators on rights-of-way along roadsides and underneath electrical transmission corridors.

This resource evaluates monarch habitat and use by monarchs in 61 conservation grasslands (including restoration sites in the U.S. Department of Agriculture Conservation Reserve Program, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program, and privately funded restored prairies) in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa. It presents establishment information for consideration in seed mix design and describe how our findings can be used to inform monarch habitat availability models, future studies, and conservation efforts.

This paper describes autonomous detection of milkweed plants using cameras mounted to vehicles. The detections were used to calculate approximate densities of milkweed plants in geo-referenced locations based on global positioning system point correspondences of recorded images. Probability-of-count distributions are compared for the actual milkweed plant locations near roadsides. This is one of the first examples of using automated milkweed plant detection and density mapping using a vehicle-mounted camera.

This Environment Science & Technology paper focuses on the benefits that can be realized from pollinator habitat at solar facilities across United States.