We have a big cheer for the news that the time has come for wildlife corridors.
Earlier this week The New York Times reported that wildlife crossings built to sustain the presence of wildlife, and particularly its genetic diversity, in the face of human encroachment, are working.
One of the biggest success stories is in the Pinedale region of Wyoming, where Route 191 disrupted the mule deer’s age-old migration paths and where collisions with them and pronghorn spiked every spring and fall. So the state Department of Transportation joined with the state wildlife agency and nonprofit groups to create a series of crossings and collisions have dropped by roughly 90 percent.
“This is the time of the wildlife crossing,” Mike Leahy, director of wildlife, hunting and fishing policy at the National Wildlife Federation, told the Times. “This issue has been building for decades and it was like pulling teeth. And now everyone who works on these issues seems to get it.”
Funding for crossings has been a challenge, but that may get easier, too: A bipartisan Senate version of the transportation bill being hammered out in Congress includes $350 million for wildlife crossings and corridors, according to the article.
You can read the entire article here.