Over the course of the last several weeks, I’ve had the privilege of interning with Scioto Analysis to conduct a cost-benefit analysis on wildlife crossings, specific infrastructure built to reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions on major roadways. I’ve always been interested in policy analysis, and I was excited at the opportunity to use some of the skills and tools I’ve learned in my coursework in a real-world setting.
Wildlife crossings, also known as eco-bridges, are overpasses, underpasses, or tunnels that connect two sides of the same habitat to each other. When roadways were originally built in the United States, a lot of habitats and animal migration patterns were disconnected. Wildlife crossings can help animals successfully migrate throughout their habitat once again, leading to a reduction in collisions and improvements in ecosystems.
Currently, there are a lot of federal, state, and local initiatives to build more wildlife crossings across the United States. Wildlife crossings have proven to be incredibly effective, reducing collisions by up to 90% in certain areas. With that in mind, we weren’t sure if the price tag of building wildlife crossings was worth the benefits they brought. This was a big part of our motivation in writing the cost-benefit analysis about wildlife crossings.
Like many others, I’d heard the term “cost-benefit analysis” thrown around in a lot of contexts prior to this internship, but I didn’t know all of the intricacies that went into conducting a formal cost-benefit analysis until starting this project.
In the wildlife crossings cost-benefit analysis, we had different goals for each week of the project, and the sequence of those goals was very intuitive. We started off at a high level, researching current literature and brainstorming ways that wildlife crossings could benefit or harm society. After establishing a base of research and ideas, we got into the weeds of the project where we estimated the magnitude of impacts of crossings, monetized those impacts, discounted impacts to present-day values, and performed sensitivity analysis to estimate the precision of our estimates. Finally, we moved into the drafting stage, where we were translated all of the analysis and research we had done into a digestible format.
Because the work was so clearly split into different weeks, it was clear to me when we had a week of work that I excelled at or struggled with. I found myself really thriving during the weeks of analysis and quantitative work. It was exciting to see the research we had performed come to life in estimates, charts, and Excel sheets. Even though this was the more low-level and analytical component of the project, I still had the opportunity to be creative, too. Adjusting our inputs and assumptions to analyze different case scenarios of wildlife crossings was a lot of fun, and it helped us to draw interesting conclusions and inferences about this interesting infrastructure innovation.
On the other hand, the weeks that were more challenging for me were the high-level brainstorming and ideas stages. It was difficult to start from nothing and create my own roadmap for a cost-benefit analysis. However, I found that using existing literature on wildlife crossings and even other cost-benefit analyses across different subjects helped me find more ideas and stay on track.
One of our biggest priorities during the wildlife crossings cost-benefit analysis was to find a way to quantify and monetize ecosystem services, which is the term in economics for benefits communities get from healthy ecosystems. Literature on monetizing ecosystem services is a lot more scarce than other impacts in the cost-benefit analysis world, and it was pretty unfamiliar territory for me. It was a learning experience to research and analyze the impacts that wildlife crossings had on ecosystems. Diving headfirst into wildlife crossings and ecosystem services was a great way to become an expert in a new topic fast, and conducting analysis on a topic I had never researched before was a great way to make sure I was being thorough and precise with my research and analysis, not making any jumps of logic or spurious assumptions.
My biggest takeaway from the project is the importance of taking the time to ensure a strong foundation of research, evidence, and analysis. I found I was able to be much more successful and efficient not by taking shortcuts but by staying organized. During the drafting stage of the cost-benefit analysis, I noticed that I made a big oversight in the calculation of some of our estimates. Fortunately, I prepared myself well by having all of my impacts and analysis organized and easily adjustable. What seemed like a big problem ended up being a ten minute fix.
Ultimately, we found that just one wildlife crossing can yield $13.8 million in net benefits over the course of a 70 year lifespan. For every $1 in social costs created, another $10 would be created in social benefits. We were able to make a lot of valuable conclusions about the impacts of wildlife crossings on topics varying from ecosystem services to human life.
Reaching these kinds of results and conclusions was a very rewarding experience, and I find myself excited to work on another cost-benefit analysis in the future. I enjoyed getting the opportunity to read and research different literature, reports, and news stories, and I especially liked performing analysis on information that I slowly built up over the course of several weeks. If you find yourself researching political, economic, or social phenomenons in your free time, or you enjoy conducting analysis, drawing interesting inferences, or seeing hard work come to fruition in a meaningful project, I would definitely recommend trying to get involved with the cost-benefit analysis world! It can be incredibly satisfying to see your work and analysis turn into something impactful.
Jacob Strang is a policy analysis intern at Scioto Analysis and a third-year economics and political science student at Ohio State University.