When wildlife safety turns into fierce political debate

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When wildlife safety turns into fierce political debate

A white-tailed buck is backlit by headlights moments before it dashes across rush-hour traffic on Hillview Way in Missoula, Montana. Deer are frequently hit along this busy street as it bisects two islands of open space amid growing neighborhoods. During 2016 renovations to this key arterial, the city installed streetlights in part to help traffic spot wildlife, as well as a pedestrian/wildlife underpass at Moose Can Gully. That narrow tunnel of concrete, though, isn’t used very often by deer. Soon they won’t have as much incentive to cross; in November, the city approved construction of 68 townhouses which will cover most of the grassy meadow below Hillview. Photy by Paul Queneau
A white-tailed buck is backlit by headlights moments before it dashes across rush-hour traffic on Hillview Way in Missoula, Montana. Deer are frequently hit along this busy street as it bisects two islands of open space amid growing neighborhoods. During 2016 renovations to this key arterial, the city installed streetlights in part to help traffic spot wildlife, as well as a pedestrian/wildlife underpass at Moose Can Gully. That narrow tunnel of concrete, though, isn’t used very often by deer. Soon they won’t have as much incentive to cross; in November, the city approved construction of 68 townhouses which will cover most of the grassy meadow below Hillview. Photy by Paul Queneau

By Ben Goldfarb, High Country News,  December 30, 2019  

 

ONE BLUEBIRD MORNING in  September, I chugged north on U.S. 20 in a procession of RVs,  campervans and Subarus back-loaded with mountain bikes — the West’s  recreational economy loose on the land. The highway slipped from  sagebrush flats to lodgepole forests and back, occasionally do-si-doing  with the glittering course of the Henrys Fork River. The speed limit  plunged from 65 to 45 mph as the road passed through clusters of gas  stations and cabins, though the signs felt more like suggestions —  everyone in a hurry to get to a trailhead or a fishing hole, anywhere  besides where they already were.

North of town, the road began to climb.  The land tightened, crinkling as though squeezed by a giant fist, as the  highway wound out of the Island Park caldera — the vast volcanic  footprint planted more than a million years earlier by the Yellowstone  hotspot — and into the Henrys Lake Mountains. Whippy poles marked  snowmobile trails. This tortuous 4-mile stretch was Targhee Pass, and it  was the source of the trouble.


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Jean Bjerke on U.S. 20 near the summit of Targhee Pass on the Idaho/Montana border. Bjerke has been a vocal proponent of wildlife passage structures for the area, where numerous wildlife-vehicle collisions have occurred. Photo by Bradly J. Boner for High Country News
Jean Bjerke on U.S. 20 near the summit of Targhee Pass on the Idaho/Montana border. Bjerke has been a vocal proponent of wildlife passage structures for the area, where numerous wildlife-vehicle collisions have occurred. Photo by Bradly J. Boner for High Country News


 This story was originally published by High Country News (hcn.org) on December 30, 2019