Work has begun on a long-awaited wildlife overpass on Interstate 17 south of Flagstaff. It’s the first of three intended for the area, which wildlife biologists say will dramatically reduce car crashes with elk and other animals.
KNAU's Melissa Sevigny spoke with Jeff Gagnon of the Arizona Game and Fish Department at the construction site.
KNAU: "Tell me where we’re standing right now and what we’re looking at.
JEFF GAGNON: We’re standing at the location of the Willard Springs overpass right where it’s being built. You can see the equipment starting to dig the base for this. And they’ll continue to work on this for the rest of the summer and into the fall and have most of this done by then, and be able to come back next year and kind of finish this up.
KNAU: How does it feel just standing here and seeing the groundbreaking happen?
GAGNON: It’s amazing, it’s been almost my whole career that I’ve been involved in this project some way or another, and to be able to see them actually making progress is pretty amazing to me.
KNAU: Why this spot, of everywhere to put a wildlife crossing?
GAGNON: This spot that we’re in now is one of the highest areas in the state for wildlife-vehicle collisions, and elk are larger animals that cause a lot of injuries, property damage, and worse, when people hit elk. In working with ADOT and the Forest Service who owns the land around us, we decided the priority was to focus on this area first, with the next wildlife crossing we’re working on.
KNAU: Tell me a little more — this data is quite dramatic. You’ve got radio-collared animals that are just ... they’re not crossing the highways, they’re not crossing the 17 and the 40 — or if they try to cross, they don’t make it. Why is that such a big problem for wildlife?
GAGNON: Wildlife need to be able to move across their whole range to be able to thrive. In some instances, if there’s drought and their water sources dry up on one side of the road, they need to be able to get to water on the other side; or if there’s a large snowstorm and they need to be able to migrate somewhere to survive the winter ... There’s also some issues with pronghorn with genetic interchange, being able to have healthy populations. There’s a lot of things that come with this habitat fragmentation ... So they’re able to try to kind of adapt to it by shifting their migration, but it’s limiting where they are able to go to be able to find what they need for survival.
KNAU: How do you know when the crossing is built that the animals will use it?
GAGNON: We know that animals will use wildlife crossings if they have the fence to guide them there, and they have an adequate wildlife crossing, then over time they’ll use them. We’ve seen that over and over again in Arizona and other states. Once the crossing goes it, it may take a short amount of time for them to become acclimated to it, but usually we see, with elk for example, in about four years we see them starting to use the structure very regularly, and they’re taking their young across the structure, it’s kind of building that memory.
KNAU: Can you describe what the overpass here will look like when it’s done?
GAGNON: From the animal’s perspective, it's going to be 100 feet wide ... Because it’s also going through an area where the road goes down below the ridge, the overpass sits on top of that, and so it’s a continuation of the habitat they have. The animals can come up to it and say, 'Oh, this is just part of my habitat.' And the idea is we’ll also have vegetation there that matches the surroundings, we’ll have a few dead logs in there, whatever it may be, to be able to promote other wildlife moving through there. That’s what the animals will see.
What people will see when they’re driving, it’ll look just like a bridge to nowhere, is the term I’ve heard them called ... They may not actually know that’s there for wildlife. What we see is we can simultaneously allow people to travel safely and animals to travel safely and they hardly know they’re there when you have a system like that.
KNAU: Jeff Gagnon, thank you so much for speaking with me.
GAGNON: You’re welcome, thank you."
