Safe Passages for Wildlife in the Southern Canadian Rockies
This project will monitor the effectiveness of highway wildlife crossings (overpasses and underpasses) to reduce the road mortality of wildlife in southeastern B.C., including grizzly bear, black bear, wolverine, lynx, cougar, elk, mule deer, white-tailed deer, bighorn sheep, American badger, moose, and other wildlife.
This year, work will focus on purchasing equipment and classifying images to support existing monitoring of wildlife crossing structures along Highway 3 in the Elk Valley. Also, a monitoring program will be started in Radium Hot Springs, where a series of wildlife crossing structures for bighorn sheep are being installed.
Update: Six wildlife crossing built
Crossings created in our Columbia Region are helping wildlife safely cross beneath a busy highway.
Since 2020, a project funded by our Columbia Region board and led by the Province of B.C. has built six underpasses under bridges near Sparwood.
Now, monitoring has detected wildlife—including grizzly bears, bighorn sheep, and elk—using the underpasses three times as often as before the underpasses were built. Initial reports indicate fewer animals are being struck on the highway.
Executive Summary
Highway 3 in southeast British Columbia (BC) is an obstacle for wildlife connectivity and a hotspot of wildlife-vehicle collisions. Southeast BC is home to one of the largest assemblages of large mammal species in North America. However, the highway fracture zone adversely affects these species at local (Elk Valley) and continental scales (Canada/USA), leading to numerous conservation challenges.These challenges include fragmenting crucial habitats and populations, and causing direct mortality due to collisions. Many species impacted by the highway, such as grizzly bears, wolverines, bighorn sheep, American badgers, elk, and mule deer, are of local conservation concern and hold high cultural values. More than a decade of research has contributed to our knowledge and proposed solutions to mitigate the impacts of Highway 3 on human and wildlife safety.
Here we report on a project to reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions and promote safe connectivity through exclusion fencing and wildlife crossing structures. The Reconnecting the Rockies: BC project proposes to fence 27 km of Highway 3 from Olsen Crossing east of Hosmer to the BC-Alberta border. On average, 41 roadkill are reported in this stretch each year, and this number may be as high as 124 after accounting for unreported roadkill. These collisions cost society at least 1.6 million per year, but the cost could be as high as 4.8 million. Similar mitigation projects in neighboring jurisdictions (AB, MT,WA, CO, etc.) have successfully reduced collisions with wildlife by >80%.
Guided by an abundance of past research and stakeholder engagement to identify key areas and best approaches, we broke ground on the project in 2020. We began retrofitting existing bridges to serve as underpasses, preparing the ground work for a large wildlife overpass, and future fencing.Between 2020-2024 we constructed 8.4 km of wildlife exclusion fencing (4.2 highway km’s) and retrofitted 6 underpasses. The effectiveness monitoring program has had continued success with treatment and control cameras deployed at each site, over a million photos classified, and ongoing grizzly bear collaring. Early results show wildlife are readily using the underpasses within the fenced sections. Wildlife detection rates increased by 2-3 fold at the underpasses that have been fenced. It is still a bit premature to fulsomely assess the Phase 1 fence effectiveness at reducing collisions at this time, but initial inquiries suggest the fewer animals are being reported as struck. Roadkill reductions will be better assessed in future years when more years post-fencing is available, more phases are fenced, and roadkill data quality issues are addressed. We provide a summary of project progress, data collected to date, and recommendations to ensure project effectiveness.
Previously, work funded by FWCP aligned with FWCP’s Columbia Upland and Dryland Action Plan, focusing on habitat-based actions with the priority action of improvement of connectivity habitats (COLUPD.ECO.HB.13.01 Improvement of connectivity habitats-P1) as the work we are doing directly increases safe connectivity across a major highway and reduces mortality caused by vehicle collisions. This year, the primary focus was monitoring and reporting through Action 18 of the plan (COLUPD.ECO.ME.18.01 Effectiveness monitoring of past projects-P1.