Wildlife can safely bypass busy roadways in parts of the West. Could NC follow suit?

A simple box culvert cut into the earth under a motorway could be the safe passage that prevents wildlife in North Carolina’s national parks from becoming roadkill.

Just ask Canada — and some of our neighbors to the west.

More than 20 years ago, a portion of funds designated for Canada’s transcontinental highway system were set aside for two important wildlife saving measures: fencing in the roadway and constructing animal crossings, Canadian Geographic reported in 2017.

Those crossings were anything from drainage culverts to complex highway overpasses redesigned as an extension of the parkland surrounding it.

The Wyoming Department of Transportation did something similar in 2010 when it committed to building over- and underpasses for wildlife along the “path of the pronghorn,” where a herd of antelope migrate bi-annually, according to the National Parks Conservation Association.

Arizona created crossings in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area for its herd of bighorn sheep, as did Montana — which boasted 41 crossing structures for all its wildlife along 56 miles of roadway as of 2013, the NPCA said.

Are wildlife crossings coming to North Carolina?

A four-lane stretch of I-40 running through Pigeon River gorge has become something of a “death trap” for creatures looking to cross, WBIR reported.

So the Southeast Regional Office of the NCPA has set its sights on building wildlife corridors across roadways in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, according to the Fall 2019 Field Report.

Jeff Hunter is a senior project manager in the southeast office who “spends most of his time coordinating a collaborative project focused on improving wildlife’s ability to safely cross Interstate 40 in the Pigeon River Gorge, just outside of the Smokies,” according to his online bio.

The project was in its “formative stages” in November 2018, according to The Mountaineer.

Hunter and the NCPA already had a “buy-in from transportation departments in both North Carolina and Tennessee, all of the forest service agencies working on the surrounding national forests, the National Park Service and a litany of non-governmental agencies with interests relating to wildlife, conservation and road ecology,” the magazine reported.

By this summer, Hunter and his stakeholders were starting to keep track of where accidents with wildlife happen most frequently, according to Blue Ridge Outdoors.

The study not only looks at where they’re dying but why — “Is it the topography? Is it the ridges? Are they following streams? What is it about the landscape that the road cuts through that’s causing animals to be killed with greater frequency in some areas than others?” Hunter told the magazine.

A GPS collar also monitors 11 elk as part of the study and confirms their location hourly, including where they’re crossing roadways, Blue Ridge Outdoors reported.

How do animals use crossing structures?

Black bears are frequently hit on I-40, the Mountaineer reported.

In 2018, according to WBIR, four lanes of traffic were halted in both directions on the Tennessee-North Carolina border when three black bear cubs stumbled into the roadway after their mother.

Elk were only reintroduced to the Smokies in 2001 after they were all but eliminated in the 1700s, according to Blue Ridge Outdoors.

They can weigh more than 900 pounds and are tall, meaning a small car might only hit its legs while its body crashes into the windshield, WBIR reported.

One was hit in September — a 2-year-old bull elk that “broke both hind legs and was euthanized,” according to the media outlet.

They’d take an alternative if it was offered.

Hunter, who invited an expert from Banff National Park of Canada to take a look at the gorge in North Carolina, told WBIR that Canada’s wildlife mortality on highways where elk and grizzly bears were commonly hit is now close to nothing thanks to its crossings.

Parks Canada human-wildlife conflict specialist Steve Michel told Canadian Geographic they’ve seen black bears and mountain lions will frequent tunnels when seeking to cross while grizzlies prefer the overpasses.

The same concept can be applied to creatures more commonly found in North Carolina.

“Bears do really well with underpasses, as do bobcats,” Hunter told Blue Ridge Outdoors. “White tailed deer will use culverts and underpasses if they are large enough. Elk, not so much. Elk like open landscapes and large structures. Elk like overpasses.”

The state has already seen some unintentional success detouring animal traffic.

Citing Hunter, WBIR reported a box culvert used by Duke Power to get under the interstate and a portion of the Appalachian Trail that crosses under I-40 have served as kind of pseudo crossing structures for bears.

Bears, deer and bobcats also use a double-tunnel five miles from the state line to cross, according to the media outlet.

“Those double-tunnels are essentially a wide land bridge,” Hill told WBIR.

What’s next?

If all goes well, wildlife corridors could be a national mandate under the Wildlife Corridors Conservation Act of 2019.

The bill was introduced in the Senate earlier this year and “provides a framework to address the long-term habitat connectivity of native species” — including a push for federally designated National Wildlife Corridors, according to Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M.

In the meantime, researching the movement of wildlife in North Carolina requires time.

Hunter predicted it could be another year or two before it’s finished, WBIR reported. Then the work on necessary crossings can begin.