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>> The first actual construction action that we're doing currently in the context of this Kuyucuk restoration is to remove this road. [background noise] This little road right here is not used very much. It's only used by the villagers going around from one part of the lake to the other. The main road beyond us here, farther away outside of the lake proper, historically has been a main artery between our part of Turkey and the country of Armenia, not used very much in the last decade or so because of the border closure between the countries but there's a lot of movement to begin to open up that road. There's a whole bunch of concerns with that from an ecological standpoint. But this road, at least, is not used very much and we've taken the opportunity to begin to remove it. As you can see here we're not removing the entire road that's bisecting this part of the lake. Rather we're chopping off part of this road and then farther on the other side of the lake chopping off another part of the road. So in effect we're creating an island. There will be, we're not done with it yet but somewhere between 30 to 50 meter gap in the roadway on both sides after the sediment settles and erosion does its thing. And we'll have an island now where pelicans and storks and water birds and everybody can actually nest free of disturbance from grazers, cows and horses that will be walking around, but also to be free from terrestrial predators. Here this is the Kars Akyaka road. This is again the road that is joining Kars, the city of Kars, the Provence of Kars, to Armenia and to the second largest city, most populous city in Armenia. This is a major highway. Currently, for the last decade or so, not much traffic but probably in the near term much more traffic as the border opens up. We see lots of road kill along this road. Birds especially, but also small mammals. And so here's a classic case of a road through, if you look this way, through a large plain that has several negative consequences for the wildlife around.
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>> So roads can inhibit hydrology as in Lake Kuyucuk. They can have road kill effects, as we see on the highway there. They can also have an expanding effect on the surrounding environments. Here we go, this is a new spur, a new section of railroad. The Kars-Tbilisi line. This will go from Kars to Tbilisi, Georgia. And after this is completed, passenger or freight will be able to get on in Istanbul and get off in Moscow. So this new rail line here is a great example of how when we start a road, a path, a rail line, it doesn't just affect the immediate area, there's ever-widening impacts. These impacts oftentimes are hard to see. In this case it's very easy to see as we're in the middle of this construction. So both fragmenting habitat as well as degrading the surrounding communities around whatever that is, the path, the road, the railway. So transportation corridors are a major conservation issue wherever we are in the world, here in Turkey, back in California, in the Amazon, wherever. And it's something we need to deal with in a responsible manner.