Wildlife Crossing Structures
Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada is one of the best places to study the effectiveness of wildlife crossing structures. The busy Trans-Canada Highway cuts east-west across the park, making it difficult for wildlife to travel north-south through the Rocky Mountains. When the highway was upgraded in the 1980's from a single two-lane road to a four-lane divided highway, it became increasingly busy and escalating vehicle-wildlife collisions threatened the safety of both humans and wildlife.
 |
|
A wolf uses an underpass. This |
To improve safety and increase wildlife mobility, Y2Y and other groups supported the construction of wildlife crossings along the highway. Fencing along the highway was also installed to keep animals off the roads and direct them towards the safe crossings. Today there are four overpasses and 24 underpasses in Banff National Park, and more are being constructed near Lake Louise.
In the summer this stretch of highway sees over 25,000 vehicles per day, translating to one car passing every two-to-three seconds. Without safe crossing places the impact on wildlife and human safety would be disastrous.
Since the wildlife crossing structures were built more than a decade ago, over 200,000 crossings have been recorded and mortality rates on the highway have dropped by more than 80 percent. Eleven species of large mammals have used the crossing structures including grizzly and black bears, wolves, coyotes, cougars, moose, elk, deer, bighorn sheep, and more recently, wolverine and lynx.
- View trailer for Highway Wilding documentary
For more information on Highway Wilding, please click here.
- Watch videos of animals using the crossing structures
-
View website which aims to raise awareness and improve decision making around road development in sensitive ecological areas such as national parks and beyond.
