The European Journal of Wildlife Research introduces a new feature called Topical Collection, which is focused on promoting emerging areas of research. Topical Collections represent the future of the former Special Issues, and they are specially adapted to Continuous Article Publishing. Indeed, all the articles submitted at different times to the Topical Collection will be publicly available upon their very first acceptance. In addition to online publication in the Topical Collection, all articles are electronically published and printed in the regular volumes of the European Journal of Wildlife Research.

This first Topical Collection of the European Journal of Wildlife Research focuses on Road Ecology. Twenty years ago, the term Road Ecology was mentioned for the first time in international scientific journals (Forman 1998; Forman and Alexander 1998). The purpose of this discipline is to understand the interactions among roads, traffic, and the surrounding environment (Forman and Alexander 1998; Forman et al. 2003). Road-networks, indeed, are so globally widespread that a significant portion of the ecological literature is based on studies performed within road-effect zones (Forman 2000). For this reason, Road Ecology embraces several fields of research, including wildlife-vehicle collisions, changes in animal behavior such as road avoidance, landscape connectivity and habitat fragmentation, barrier effects, pathways for biological invasions, and pollution (Forman and Alexander 1998; Trombulak and Frissell 2000). Road Ecology also concerns the effectiveness of mitigation measures (such as wildlife crossing-structures) and the study of potential benefits for wildlife coexisting with road-networks (such as their use for movement or scavenging on road-killed fauna; Forman and Alexander 1998; Trombulak and Frissell 2000; Fig. 1). Nevertheless, over the years, Road Ecology studies have focused mostly on wildlife-vehicle collisions and the use of wildlife crossing-structures, and, secondarily, on the impacts related to habitat fragmentation and barrier effects (Forman et al. 2003; van der Ree et al. 2015). Overall, this emerging discipline needs to further develop generalized principles and applications. This Topical Collection aims to be a useful tool for such purposes, bringing renewed attention to Road Ecology and providing a forum for collaborative dialogue.