EVARO — There are numerous wildlife crossings along U.S. Highway 93 north of Missoula although they're not always effective at keeping animals off the road.
Lessons learned from previous projects will be implemented into new wildlife crossings going forward, including in the Ninepipes area.
“Wildlife crossings can be basically any type of structure that allows animals to safely move from one side of a highway to another,” said environmental journalist and author Ben Goldfarb.
There are two main wildlife crossing types along Highway 93 North — underpasses and an overpass. Currently, there is only one overpass along the highway that is located near Evaro.
While certain species use that overpass — such as deer, moose and black bears — there are still some issues with the crossing.
“By no means is this [overpass] not functioning, that would be an incorrect statement. What we can say is we can make it better than it currently is,” explained Marcel Huijser, a wildlife researcher who worked for Western Transportation Institute.
The issues with the overpass are mainly due to the high slope angle of the bridge, the fencing around it and the type of vegetation on top of it.
These factors cause certain species — especially smaller ones like small mammals and reptiles — to become hesitant to use the bridge due to not being able to see the other side and not having proper cover.
A lot of this comes down to the objectives in mind when constructing an overpass.
“It is important that we have a very strategic approach that is rooted in landscape ecology rather than a point location along a road or a road section, which is a line in the landscape. We need to think and operate on the landscape level if we are to be effective for ecological parameters because it’s only a landscape level that ecological parameters play out,” Huijser told MTN.
While the overpass near Evaro may have some issues, that doesn’t mean that the new one that is about to be built in the Ninepipes area will suffer from the same ones.
“We’ve learned a lot from the data that we’ve got from the structures that we have had in place for the last 20 years,” said Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes wildlife biologist Payton Adams. “So ideally, we’re going to connect two good habitat areas where animals are already utilizing the shelter and just make it more safe for those species.”
The future overpass may also have greater effectiveness because the CSKT was able to focus on a land connectivity objective besides just a human safety objective.
“Our focus has been more wildlife safety and connectivity, but as well as human safety and human connectivity,” Adams explained.
As construction grows nearer, CSKT hopes that the amount of wildlife on the roads will decrease with the new crossings.
The timeline of the Ninepipe project has yet to be concretely set but a feasibility study has been completed and the design process is the next step.
Funding for the project would come primarily from federal sources.
WATCH previous coverage: Buttigieg discusses funding for Highway 93 improvements on Flathead Indian Reservation
