TAKE A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE

OVER A SUMMER, I watch three spotted deer fawns wander my backyard in Flagstaff. Our homeowners’ association outlaws fences, in part so the deer can pass safely from house to house. Still, we have roads that bisect the neighborhood as uniformly as fences do. It’s not uncommon to see half a herd of deer standing on one side, with the other half standing across as they wait for the cars to pass. Mostly, the deer are patient and the drivers move slowly. Except when they don’t.

As I drive down Fox Hill Road to pick up my son from basketball practice, a blue Audi is parked to the left. It has its hazard lights on. I slow enough to see a man lift a fawn by its legs, its entrails dragging across the asphalt, and put it to the side, where there’s some dirt to absorb the remaining blood. The deer’s coat matches the sandy soil. The dots on the fawn’s belly match the white concrete gutter. I drive forward. The Audi follows suit. I try to keep it together. I have to pick up my son, and I don’t want him to see my face a red mess of tears.

If it hadn’t happened right in front of me, I probably wouldn’t be so upset. If I’d seen the fawn on the side of the road, already dead — as I see Abert’s squirrels, elk, coyotes, skunks, cats, adult deer and ravens — I would have nodded at the twist of fur and bone and shaken my head, thinking, What a shame. Sometimes, I’m glad I live in Flagstaff, where we have enough scavengers, such as ravens and vultures, to keep me from having to see the result of car-and-flesh collisions as often as I saw it in other, more populated places I’ve lived, such as Salt Lake City and Portland.

But vehicles strike and kill animals all over the world, not just in the American West. According to the Federal Highway Administration, 365 million animals are killed by motor vehicles in the U.S. each year — a million animals a day. Globally, it’s estimated that more than 5.5 million vertebrates are killed daily on roads, which adds up to more than 2 billion annually. These incidents threaten the survival of several endangered or threatened species, including tortoises, salamanders, ocelots, foxes, bighorn sheep and red wolves.

I drive from Flagstaff to Tucson to visit my daughter, who attends the University of Arizona. On the way down, I pass what might have been an American badger. It’s biggish and dark-furred, but I can’t really tell; maybe it was a raccoon. A mule deer to the left looks like its neck has been broken. Luckily, I don’t see an elk carcass, because that ends up being a death sentence for elk, car and sometimes human.

By the Sedona exit, a grayish mound that may have been a gray fox. Then, one coyote. Then two. Then three. I try to reanimate them in my mind. I plead with them to think before they jump. Perhaps they can find what they’re looking for west of Interstate 17, I argue with them in my mind. Stay to the west, I plead. When I arrive in Phoenix, blissfully, there are no dead creatures on the road. It’s not until after Casa Grande that the animals return. Roadrunner. Fox. Javelina. Coyote. Coyote. Coyote. Coyotes all the way down.
 

THE EFFECT ON ANIMALS is not only the evidence we see on the side of the road. Roads divide and conquer entire populations. Animals cross roads for lots of reasons: migration, territorial disputes, food, water, mating. Instinct, habit and need force these animals to step from dirt and grass onto tarmac to complete their travels — if a car doesn’t hit them first.

But some animals are shy about crossing roads, which is good for their immediate existence, but not so great for their species. The Arizona Game and Fish Department has spent the past couple of decades researching how roads divide groups of animals and curtail their movement. “The lion’s share of those studies are funded by [the Arizona Department of Transportation] and focus on reducing wildlife-vehicle collisions and connecting habitat,” says Chad Loberger, a Game and Fish research biologist. “To that end, we’ve done a few studies that have focused on pronghorn antelope.”

At first, the researchers looked at U.S. Route 89, a relatively new roadway with relatively low traffic volume, to see how pronghorns interacted with the roadway. “Pronghorns are hesitant to cross them, [and] fencing hampers and prevents pronghorn movements,” Loberger says. “We discovered that, from a meta-population aspect, some herds might be becoming more isolated.” This fracturing of pronghorn groups leads, over time, to inbreeding and reduced genetic variation.

Jeff Gagnon, who works with Loberger, earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in wildlife management from Northern Arizona University. At Game and Fish, he interned with Norris Dodd, who brought him into a project along State Route 260 — the first major wildlife highway project led by the department. After Dodd retired in 2008, Gagnon took over the department’s connectivity group, with a focus on wildlife corridors.

As population centers in Arizona grow, the researchers are leading the way to understanding and preventing collisions between wildlife and vehicles. It’s an effort that builds on work done on Arizona’s stretch of U.S. Route 93 to support the state’s bighorn sheep population, which had fallen to dangerously low numbers before restoration efforts began in the 1960s. After three wildlife overpasses were constructed on U.S. 93, vehicle collisions with sheep dropped from 12 per year to fewer than one per year.

The department’s most recent project is the Willard Springs Wildlife Overpass, south of Flagstaff. Construction of this wildlife crossing over I-17 continues; recently, 26 large girders were installed, and specially designed wildlife fencing is now being added. Loberger says the site was selected based on a number of variables, but mainly as a result of research that was conducted at that location for more than 20 years. In addition, the U.S. Forest Service owned the land, the topography was appropriate for an overpass, and an existing roadcut made the location cost-effective.

I like to imagine “opening day” for the animals, but it’ll take a while to encourage them to cross. Fencing that directs wildlife toward the bridge will help, as will planting appropriate vegetation that serves as an inducement. “In some cases, wildlife will start crossing even before the project is officially complete,” Gagnon says. “The fencing is key, though, to help animals first find the crossings.

“Ultimately, [habits] seem to be passed down through generations. We find that species have a learning curve. For elk, it’s roughly four years. However, in the case of I-17, there is a possibility it could be learned quicker, since the highway is such a barrier.”

Coyotes, foxes and bobcats, he says, will be funneled toward nearby large culverts beneath the road. “Those smaller animals will also use the overpass,” Loberger adds. “Once this fencing is installed, I-17 will have wildlife fencing from Woods Canyon to Kelly Canyon, and that is good for motorists and wildlife when combined with wildlife crossings and culverts.”
 

ANIMALS LIVE EVERYWHERE, but they don’t stay in one place. Nature is neither zoo nor chaos. Animals are habitual, and they’ve thrived where they live because their environment produces what they need — even if they have to travel a bit to get it.  Some animals, such as bears, wildebeests, elephants and bison, create pathways called century trails, which are used generation after generation to reach nesting grounds, food or water sources, or safe hiding places. Humans, though, build roads that bisect these trails. And studies have shown that animal species, particularly at-risk ones, could decline without policies limiting road construction. 

Where roads already exist, communities across the globe are trying to find ways to protect both animals and vehicles by building wildlife bridges and culverts that allow animals to safely cross. The first overland wildlife bridge was constructed in France in the 1950s, and the concept spread to other countries, including, eventually, the U.S. The first wildlife bridge here was built over Interstate 15 near Beaver, Utah, in 1975. As I drive through Beaver to visit my mom in Salt Lake City, I scan the horizon for pronghorns, deer and coyotes. I don’t see any animals frolicking through the piñon pines and junipers. I also don’t see any dead ones on the side of the road.

On YouTube, Gagnon posts video of wildlife bridges across the state. I watch a recording from June 2, 2012, which shows a desert bighorn ewe and her lamb using one of the three overpasses to cross U.S. 93. They walk calmly as a river of traffic flows beneath them. In just one year, more than 500 bighorns crossed over those overpasses.

With the new I-17 bridge crossing one of the busiest highways in Arizona, imagine how much more wildlife will be safe.
 

THE BEST THING ABOUT driving from Flagstaff to Tucson is getting out of the car. The traffic on I-17 and Interstate 10 becomes more tangled every year, and I don’t like to count the coyotes I see on the side of the road. Sometimes, when I see a brown thing littering the shoulder, I’ve already started mourning — and when I realize it’s a cardboard box, it takes a moment for my emotions to untangle. I wonder if we see roadkill so often that we’ve come to see each animal as just another heap of garbage.

When I arrive in Tucson, I abandon my car for a hike in Ventana Canyon, a bighorn sheep protection area. I hike and see no bighorns, although I have seen javelinas there. There are, I’m reminded, still safe places for animals. The Ventana Canyon Trail steepens; I turn back and let the hardier bighorns have the elevation.

Gagnon says it surprises him how quickly animals often learn to use a wildlife bridge. I hope the researchers set up a camera at the Willard Springs Wildlife Overpass so we can watch the wildlife the way some of us watch Jackie and Shadow, the pair of eagles who nest at Big Bear Lake in California. What a gift it would be to see animals fully animated: pronghorns pronging, desert tortoises reaching their stout legs forward with ambition, bears lumbering, cougars soft-pedaling, ferrets sidewinding and elk ambling — with fear of neither truck nor car.