Animal Crossing IRL
November 27, 2020 5:11 PM   Subscribe

Wildlife bridges — AKA animal crossings, animal passings, ecoducts, etc. — can be pricey (costing US$2-4 million each, but one crossing can save thousands of animals lives every year. Common in Europe since the 1950s, they have become much widespread around the world.

Utah’s new wildlife overpass bridge, built in 2018 to reduce wildlife traffic accidents, is being used by animals sooner than expected. (Article via ABC13. Video vis CNN.). Answering the question of “why does the bear cross the road”, Canada has the answer.

Not all wildlife bridges are man-made: previously on MeFi, “One Year of Wildlife Crossing a Stream on a Log Bridge.
posted by darkstar (20 comments total) 19 users marked this as a favorite
 
As referenced in that ABC13 video, Southern California is on track to break ground on the largest critter bridge in the world, next year. It will cross Los Angeles’ 101 Freeway. Dubbed the Liberty Canyon Wildlife Crossing, it is expected to be completed by 2023.

(Sorry, this should have been the intro text and link for the FPP.)
posted by darkstar at 5:18 PM on November 27, 2020 [4 favorites]


As someone who has gone through more deer and other wildlife strikes than I care to mention during my time as a delivery driver in eastern WA / panhandle ID / far western MT... I love how the Native tribes in western MT have worked with the reconstruction of US Hwy 93 which runs N/S up through Missoula and then up into Kalispell with a zillion animal crossings. There are some beautiful photographs of the various kinds of crossings listed in the previous link on this page as a video slideshow. This more narrative article is an interesting read involving a lot of the personalities involved with the project.

I wish there were more animal crossings, really. Deer strikes are terrifying experiences and I think my PTSD is largely involved with the number of them I've had. Out of nowhere, dashing in front of you, no choice or warning... More animal crossings please. Fewer deer strikes.
posted by hippybear at 6:08 PM on November 27, 2020 [8 favorites]


The Utah animal bridge is about a mile from our house! We watch the camera quite often - some of the elk, deer, and moose that cross it also make an appearance in our backyard. Yay animal bridges!!!!
posted by inflatablekiwi at 6:20 PM on November 27, 2020 [9 favorites]


I love all of these so much it kind of makes me want to cry
posted by Kitchen Witch at 6:46 PM on November 27, 2020 [6 favorites]


Also WTF it is with deer that make them fling themselves in front of your noisy, smelly, rushing vehicle? Like the whole mechanical thing isn't intimidating enough? Do I need to put a wolf costume on my delivery van? I totally don't understand most of the encounters I've had with a vehicle and a deer. It seems like any thinking animal would stay away, not play "can we cross the road in time" games.
posted by hippybear at 8:31 PM on November 27, 2020 [1 favorite]


Deer run when startled, it's just what they do.

After a couple of close calls in the first year after getting my license, I learned to always have one eye on the side of the road looking for eyes when driving at night where there were trees adjacent to the road. Even that was no guarantee, of course, but it did likely prevent a couple of collisions that would have involved a deer in my lap because I was able to slow down before they were actually in the road.
posted by wierdo at 8:48 PM on November 27, 2020 [3 favorites]


I'm definitely in favor of measuring these costs in terms of animal lives saved, but they also tend to lower the cost of damage from car crashes, which is a useful fact when people who don't care so much about bears or deer or moose for themselves grumble about paying for places for animals to cross highways.
posted by ChuraChura at 8:54 PM on November 27, 2020 [6 favorites]


I...did not know there were moose in Utah.
posted by emjaybee at 9:19 PM on November 27, 2020 [3 favorites]


Although Banff has six animal overpasses and another 38 underpasses, I can assure you #18 isn’t an animal overpass, it’s a train overpass that some elk just happened to get on.
posted by furtive at 10:08 PM on November 27, 2020 [5 favorites]


We don't have any large animals in the UK, except deer, but afaik there are no purpose-built bridges for them and they seem to just leap out at random wherever they fancy, with only roadside fences and warning signs, some of which look a bit obscure (I'd be hard put to identify that badger one if I was driving past it).

The next largest animals are badgers, which get tunnels. The tunnels are presumably also used by foxes, hedgehogs etc. too.

Toads get tunnels too, but in some places where there are a lot of toads about in the mating season, human volunteers patrol the roads and personally help them across. That article doesn't mention helping them back across the road after they have mated, though.
posted by Fuchsoid at 12:30 AM on November 28, 2020 [5 favorites]


Here in Northeast Florida there's a wildlife bridge over I-95 in Flagler County and if you sign up for a trail ride at the Agricultural Museum you can ride a horse over it, which is every bit as rad as it sounds.
posted by saladin at 4:37 AM on November 28, 2020 [3 favorites]


Deer run when startled, it's just what they do.

Yes, but they also seem to run the WRONG direction. Why do they do THAT?

We must have some deer who are members of MetaFilter. Are they even reading this thread?
posted by hippybear at 4:51 AM on November 28, 2020 [5 favorites]


Salmon cannon...was this a result of engineers without adequate supervision?
posted by waving at 5:49 AM on November 28, 2020 [1 favorite]


Deer will run in all directions when startled, we only notice the deer that run across the road.

(I was paced by a moose for maybe half a kilometre once which was pretty freaky)
posted by Mitheral at 10:23 AM on November 28, 2020 [1 favorite]


Deer are very, very dumb animals.
posted by nestor_makhno at 12:07 PM on November 28, 2020 [1 favorite]


Driving home from a restaurant job at about 11 at night. Passed through a very large herd of Roosevelt Elk that were in fields on either side of the road. I could see their eyes reflected in my headlights. I've never driven more cautiously. Bulls can be 700-1100 pounds.
posted by jgaiser at 1:26 PM on November 28, 2020 [2 favorites]


Kangaroos are our "argh why are you crossing the road" equivalent. I was traveling too late at night near Bendigo (crossing the state) I saw a roo, slowed down to a stop, it crossed, I started again, it turned around and came back! Dinted the side of my car, as it kind of rolled down, no worse damage. I think/hope it was ok too- bounced off into the bush.

I was still young and getting used to country driving.
posted by freethefeet at 4:13 PM on November 28, 2020 [4 favorites]


I once saw deer standing by the side of the road, slowed down to like school zone speeds to drive past, then just as I got past them start to accelerate to leave them behind me as quickly as possible... And one of them charged at the front of my speeding-away van, got its head caught in the deer guard, and it's body snapped around into the passenger door smashing it in and breaking the deer's neck which then fell off on the side of the road.

Like, I was doing my best to NOT have a deer strike happen. So many times I haven't even seen the deer ahead of the strike, but this time I saw them! I slowed down! I mean, WTF?
posted by hippybear at 4:22 PM on November 28, 2020 [1 favorite]


the crabs tho
posted by tofu_crouton at 8:18 PM on November 28, 2020 [1 favorite]


There's another new wildlife bridge at Mandai Lake area in Singapore.

The Eco Link at Bukit Timah Expressway has apparently reduced roadkill, although efficacy of bridges elsewhere is a concern.

But refugia are a reality in Singapore, and establishing connections between them is a central element of the conservation strategy. Turns out our forests have a ridiculous amount of rare wildlife that you can't get elsewhere. For instance, 200 of the 600-1700 alive straw-headed bulbuls are present in Singapore, not just on our mostly sparse outer islands such as Pulau Ubin, but also on the mainland itself. Our Central Catchment Reserve is the last refuge for the Raffles banded langur, up from 10 in 1980's to about 60 currently. They have ropeways to cross Upper Thomson Road. Singapore is also one of the few places in the world where civet cats live within residential areas.

When I was a civil servant, I was pushing for the following plan in my thick of woods (pun intended). We would have tree canopies at two different levels: one level for birds, and another for civet cats. The ground obviously would be humans and their pets. These trees would form contagious chains with the Rail Corridor, which in itself forms a "nature superhighway" linking various spots of nature (Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve, Bukit Timah Natural Reserve) with each other. Among others, this has led to a resurgence in otter populations. For another, they had discovered 20 new animal species recently. Last weekend, was told a tree I passed by many times in Pulau Ubin was classified as a new species in 2014.
posted by the cydonian at 12:22 AM on December 1, 2020 [1 favorite]


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