Postcards from the Rogue Valley

Roadkill — in relation to animals and not politicians — is undeniably sad. If you’re like me, the easiest way to deal with that sadness is to look the other way. But, in reality, it’s haunting.

When I was eighteen, my family, for whom driving across the country was a summer habit, decided to christen the Trans-Canada Highway which had opened in July 1962, following it from Montreal to Vancouver. Car travel along this new network of largely rural two-lane roads, we quickly discovered, surprised not only the humans along the way but also the moose who called it home. By the time we reached the Canadian Rockies, we’d come across several, huge, freshly killed moose stretched out on the roadside. 

“This is not okay,” my older brother Tommy, who knew a lot about wildlife from reading National Geographic, said angrily. 

Define “needless death,” he might have added, and roadkill was right there. Not just in Canada but around the world. It was one of life’s hard truths: out of sight, out of mind

Bringing it home, a promising solution

When Tony and I moved to Ashland seven years ago, our younger son and his partner moved cross country, too, settling in Los Angeles where they soon welcomed a baby as COVID crowned. Every few months we’d drive the 675 miles down Interstate 5 to visit them, a trip that began by winding through the Siskiyou Mountains to the Siskiyou Summit (4,310 feet), 15 miles south of our house. It was the highest point on I-5’s run from Canada to Mexico. 

Friends had warned us to watch for wildlife en route. One told us about her encounter with a freshly killed cougar in the high speed lane, another about a dead bear by the side of the road. Curious, I learned that this stretch of I-5, just shy of the border with Northern California, had been dubbed the “red zone” because of the excessive number of wildlife-vehicle crashes logged there. An estimated 17,000 vehicles pass through this corridor daily.

When I read this December that Biden’s U.S. Department of Transportation had awarded Oregon a $33.2 million grant to build a wildlife crossing along this stretch of highway, I cheered. It would be the first wildlife crossing in Oregon or anywhere on I-5. Even the paper of record for the U.S. trucking industry had something to say: “Wildlife Wins: I-5 Gets First-Ever Overpass for Animals.” (The trek up and down Siskiyou Summit can be a trucker’s nightmare.)

“This was the Christmas present that wildlife in Southern Oregon were hoping for,” emeritus senior scientist Jack Williams, who coordinates the Southern Oregon Wildlife Crossing Coalition, told reporters. “It helps to heal and restore critical east-west habitat connections that were lost when Interstate 5 was built more than 50 years ago.”

Roadkill observations per decade, ScienceDirect.com

One million deaths a day

Life expectancy tables never include wildlife, of course. 

The United States Department of Transportation estimates that cars kill a million vertebrates in the U.S. every day, and even this is likely to be a significant underestimate, according to environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb, author of the new book Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet.

By comparison, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 120 people die per day die in motor vehicle crashes nationwide

And anyone who has seen a large animal carcass by the side of a road — think elk, moose mountain lion, bear — knows that crashes that involve wildlife impact more than deer, raccoons, and squirrels. It is estimated that collisions with large wild animals cause approximately 200 human deaths, 26,000 injuries, and at least $8 billion in property damage every year (Pew Trusts, 2021).

The impact on endangered species should concern us, too. A recent Federal Highway Administration Wildlife-Vehicle Collision Reduction Study found that 12 federally endangered or threatened species are directly imperiled by U.S. roadways. Roadkill, for example, is estimated to be responsible for 50 percent of deaths of Florida panthers, the only confirmed cougars on the East Coast. 

“Cars and roads have become so naturalized that they hardly register on the list of priorities for animal welfare groups,” environmental journalist Goldfarb writes.

Coyote and Interstate 5 near Mariposa Preserve

An ecological Wonderland

“Why do wildlife want to cross to the other side of the road?” my five-year-old grandson asked me when I was telling his parents about the newly minted Southern Oregon Wildlife Crossing. (I don’t think he’d heard the chicken riddle.)

“They are looking for food, water, a mate — a boyfriend or girlfriend — or maybe a new place to settle,” I suggested. “Oh,” he said and changed the subject.

As an extraordinary coalition of Southern Oregon scientists, environmentalists, private citizens and ranchers began debating where to site the wildlife crossing they imagined, the Mariposa Preserve, which straddles both sides of I-5 just north of the California border, stood out. Long viewed as an “ecological Wonderland,” it sits at the intersection of the ancient Klamath Mountains, the volcanic Cascades, the high desert of the Great Basin, and the oak woodlands of Northern California. It is one of the only mountain corridors that connects Oregon’s coast ranges to the interior Cascades.  

And the biodiversity of the 222-acre preserve, which won protected status in 1993, is extraordinary. It is home to rare mammals such as the Pacific fisher, along with deer, bear, elk, cougars and other large-bodied animals. 

A team of 17 Southern Oregon University undergraduate research assistants, led by  SOU biology and environmental sustainability professor Karen Mager, became the foot soldiers for the feasibility study. Theyused camera traps — often used by game hunters — to document wildlife movement within the preserve. Incredibly, they took over one million photos and videos, mostly triggered by wind, to capture 12,000 animal images. 

“Never in my wildest dreams,” said one student, “did I imagine I would be catching cougars on film.”

Aerial view of 101 Freeway, Los Angeles and mockup of Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing

Even a freeway is redeemable

In the past several months, Southern Oregon’s new wildlife crossing was not the only animal commute making headlines.

A week ago, an article in The Guardian shouted, “Even a freeway is redeemable! World’s largest wildlife crossing takes shape in Los Angeles.”

Named after its benefactor, the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing across LA’s 101 freeway will connect two parts of the Santa Monica mountains. It will address the needs of the local mountain lion population, facing habitat fragmentation caused by urban development and highways. Coyotes and bobcats are other beneficiaries.

While the Southern Oregon crossing is entirely publicly funded, the Anneberg crossing was not. When the National Wildlife Foundation (NWF) and Caltrans proposed a massive corridor across the 101 freeway in Agoura Hills to provide safe crossing for wildlife, it accepted the fact that the bridge’s size, cost, and completion would be reliant on donations from the public.

In 2016, Wallis Annenberg and the Annenberg Foundation took up the call and made a $1 million challenge grant to spur the community and local leaders to donate. More than 3,000 private, philanthropic, and corporate institutions around the world ending up helping the National Wildlife Foundation raise enough money to begin construction. It started a few months ago and is expected to be complete in 2026.  

“The crossing,” says Wallis Annenberg, “is not just a structure – it is also a symbol of the connection between humans and their wildlife, even in one of the most urban areas in the country.”

Mock up (without art work) of Southern Oregon Wildlife Crossing

Feeling safe

Wallis Annenberg might have added that the LA crossing project was not just about connecting humans and their wildlife but also about a bedrock life need, whether human or non-human: safety. 

Border crossings in today’s world, we know, are increasingly and decidedly unsafe. When it comes to vehicles and wildlife — albeit a border crossing of a different order —the stakes are higher than ever, too.

“Whatever we do, we will have accomplished little if the wild animals we seek to support don’t feel safe,” SOU’s Mager says about the wildlife crossing in the Mariposa Preserve. She outlines the plan she and her colleagues have created:

“There will be two arches that actually sit on top of the highway lanes, and then above them will just be essentially an enormous wide bridge that’s constructed to feel comfortable to wildlife.

“It will include walls that help to dampen sound and block out lights, which we know can really influence the feelings of safety that wildlife have in crossing the road. There will be a deep layer of soil. Without this, animals would never set foot. The bridge will be planted with a full complement of native plant species to create a habitat that’s comfortable for wildlife to cross.

“The bridge will be connected to a couple of miles of fencing to the north and south that will help funnel animals towards the wildlife crossing. There will be jump outs so that if an animal actually ends up on the highway, they can easily jump to the safe side of the fence.”

As for the humans, Mager imagines drivers entering Oregon from California, spying an overpass the likes of which they have never seen — bedecked with native plants and blazoned with a “Welcome to Oregon” sign and a mural of wild animals — and feeling connected to a world larger than themselves.

There is no definitive number of how many wildlife crossings currently exist in the United States, but one estimate is 1,000. The majority are underpasses, a small number are overpasses, typically in a national park, but none near as ambitious as the Southern Oregon and Wallis Annenberg wildlife crossings.

Between 1996 and 2016, 38 underpasses were built along the Trans-Canada Highway, reducing moose deaths by roughly 90 percent.

Note: In late February, federal funding for the I-5 wildlife crossing was paused amid a larger review of transportation by the Trump Administration.

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