|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
There’s an exciting new development in conservation these days: highway wildlife crossings. Whether these are land bridges or underpasses, they help animals get safely across freeways, protecting their lives and those of motorists and saving billions of dollars.
Statewide, collisions between vehicles and wildlife kill dozens of people and tens of thousands of animals yearly. It’s estimated that wildlife-vehicle collisions in California cost $1-2 billion for the period between 2016-2020. Deer are the most common animals to be killed in collisions, but hundreds of mountain lions, black bears, and other large animals are struck and killed by vehicles throughout the state.
This has a particular resonance here on the Peninsula, where Highway 280 has the dubious distinction of being the roadkill capital of California. The stretch between San Bruno and Cupertino, which is bordered on both sides by open space for much of its length, is the deadliest highway in the state in terms of frequency and impact of wildlife-vehicle collisions.
The solution is simple: make it possible for animals to get across freeways without having to dodge traffic. And thankfully, public agencies, including Caltrans (which manages the state’s highway system), are starting to make this a priority. The initial cost of building a land bridge or constructing an underpass is more than paid for by the reduced cost of collisions, not to mention the lives saved. By using directional fencing to stop animals from trying to run across the highway and instead of guiding them toward nearby crossings, we can both protect drivers and help animals migrate to where they need to go.
Here are some examples of planned and recently completed highway wildlife crossings in the Bay Area and elsewhere in California:
Highway 17: This heavily-trafficked freeway is deadly for mountain lions, with 13 documented mountain lion deaths between 2000 and 2017. But a new wildlife crossing underneath Highway 17 at Laurel Curve is expected to significantly reduce the number of wildlife-vehicle collisions. In fact, less than an hour after crews installed motion sensor cameras at the new undercrossing, the cameras recorded a bobcat strolling through the tunnel! Wildlife tracking experts will conduct a three-year monitoring project to document how many animals use the undercrossing. There’s also a plan to build a second Highway 17 undercrossing farther north, near Los Gatos.
Highway 101: Some larger animals are reluctant to use tunnels or undercrossings, so we need overcrossings (land bridges) as well. These require more land and can be more expensive to build, but projects are moving forward. One newly preserved property near San Juan Bautista at Rocks Ranch is the proposed site for an overcrossing that would help wildlife safely cross over Highway 101. A well-known overcrossing that recently began construction is the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing over Highway 101 in Southern California’s Santa Monica Mountains.
There are many more sites where animals are in danger as they try to race across highways, but given time, we can build wildlife crossings at many of these locations and thus save the lives of both animals and people.
In other news, my favorite local environmental organization, Green Foothills, is holding a nature photo contest. Submit your photos by August 15 for a chance to win great prizes, including gift cards for REI, Sports Basement and farmer's markets!
