ABSTRACT
Interest in the ecology and natural history of roads is not new. Observations of the effects of roads on roadside ecology have been published since the first half of the 1900s (e.g. Simmons, 1938; Dickerson, 1939). Nevertheless, research on the ecological effects of roads was rather scant until the 1990s, centring only more recently on the ecology of roadsides and the effects of habitat fragmentation caused by roads. Earlier twentieth century publications were more in the form of observations than research per se. Attention focused on the mortality of animals on roads, which over the decades caused sufficient concern to label roads as 'long, narrow slaughterhouses' (Schullery, 1987), while other authors extolled the benefits of roadsides for some wildlife.
