Road and railroad verges may contribute to nature conservation by providing habitat
for many species, but due to limited resources, there is a need to select the most
important road and railroad stretches for adapted management. We explore the responsibility
species concept as a tool for the Swedish Transport Administration to make this selection.
We propose lists of candidate responsibility species based on relative abundance of
conservation priority species in the vicinity of roads and railroads, respectively.
Abundance data were derived from crowd-sourced species observations. Species with
≥20% of observations in infrastructure habitats were included as candidate responsibility
species. For roads 32 species were included in the list, for railroads seven species,
with an overlap of three species between the lists. We analyzed habitat and management
requirements of the listed species to try identifying functional groups. Most of the
species require open or semi-open habitats, mainly dry grassland or heathland on sandy
or limy soil, un-sprayed crop fields, or solitary trees. Host plants or substrates
include broom (genus Genista), patches of bare soil, and sun exposed wood. Conservation
actions prescribed for the species include, e.g., late or irregular mowing, removal
of the field layer, planting of host species, protecting and providing particular
substrates, and special protection of certain sites. We argue that road and railroad
managers are particularly well suited to conduct most of these actions. We consider
the responsibility species concept to be a useful tool for transportation agencies
to set priorities for adapted verge management, and the current method to be effective
in identifying a first list of candidate species. We discuss the possibility of also
identifying responsibility habitats or general management measures based on the results.