Conservationists say new work to improve wildlife crossings along the busy Highway 3 is important, but more needs to be done to make it safe for people and wildlife.
There are hundreds of recorded wildlife collisions along Highway 3 between Hwy 22 in Alberta and Cranbrook, B.C., averaging 160 per year in Alberta, and a further 186 on the B.C. side.
The collision statistics are based on numbers gathered between 2017 and 2022. The Miistakis Institute estimates that for every recorded collision, another 2.6 animals die away from the road.
"When you look at the landscape and you look at reducing collisions with wildlife and keeping animals moving safely, fencing is a key part of that, and the fencing will obviously keep animals off the road,” Tim Johnson, landscape connectivity specialist with Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, said.
“But without a place for them to cross it's just a barrier.”
Fencing is going in several places along the B.C. side of the road corridor, along with some expansion of existing wildlife underpasses. But the real need, according to Johnson and others, is for new crossing options.
"The Elk Valley Regional Land Trust is concerned with connectivity and they are concerned to address the problems that have been created by logging and urbanization in Fernie, so we need to maintain connectivity corridors," Kevin Laroche, with the Elk Valley Regional Land Trust, said.
To the south in Montana, there are vast tracts of wilderness including the Frank Church, which gives way to Waterton National Park, Castle Wilderness Area and the Flathead Valley. To the north are the mountain national parks and a network of other wilderness areas.
But those two vast areas are separated by the traffic and communities around Highway 3 and Crowsnest Pass. For slow reproducing grizzly bears, wolverines and American badgers, it means populations are more genetically isolated and territories more limited.
Parks Canada has provided just shy of $2 million to Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative to help with the costs of further research, Indigenous engagement and construction. But previous work has already identified 31 potential wildlife crossing points in BC.
Laroche said research and study are vital, but most of the work has already been done.
"There's a point at which study and consideration and research become counter productive," he says. "It's time to act. Because if we don't act now, we won’t have the opportunity in the future."
