John,
Human and wildlife transportation corridors often intersect, limiting safe routes for animals.
Roadways and highways fragment habitats for wildlife like mule deer—cutting them off from crucial habitat and making them more vulnerable to being struck and killed by cars.
Luckily, bridges, culverts, tunnels, fencing, and related wildlife crossings can help wildlife move safely across roads. Wildlife crossings are an important investment that can protect people and animals, and Congress has a chance to support and fund these projects in the Highway Bill.
Call on your representative to support wildlife crossings.
Building wildlife crossing structures like overpasses, underpasses, and culverts in combination with funneling fences along roads has proven to be the most effective measure to reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions across America and around the world.
Proactively ramping up wildlife crossings can help wildlife reach the resources they need—such as food, water, shelter, and breeding sites—connecting migration corridors and critical wildlife habitat, and rerouting animals on a detour from danger.
Please ask your representative to prioritize robust funding in the upcoming Highway Bill for wildlife crossings programs aimed at reducing wildlife-vehicle collisions—improving human safety and connecting habitats.
Mule deer are among the most beloved and iconic wildlife of the American West. These big-eared deer need a lot of room to roam—the longest known migration of a mule deer is nearly 250 miles from southwest Wyoming’s Red Desert all the way to Island Park, Idaho.
In the state of Wyoming, collisions with elk, mule deer, moose, and pronghorn have cost $50 million annually. However, successful implementations of wildlife crossings has reduced ungulate-vehicle collisions where they are installed by approximately 80 percent.
Wildlife crossings make roads safer for people and wildlife. Ask your Representative to support wildlife crossings in the Highway Bill, and to learn more by attending a briefing on wildlife crossings in the Highway Bill on March 5.
Thank you for watching out for wildlife in our interconnected world.
