Project Title: Identifying and prioritizing highway segments for wildlife mitigation in western Montana: using road-kill, wildlife-vehicle collision, wildlife linkage, state transportation improvement planning, and land ownership data

Overview: To determine western Montana highway mitigation priorities, by September 2008 American Wildlands will have completed an analysis of the intersection between wildlife linkages and highway-wildlife interaction “hotspots”. This analysis is designed to meet two primary objectives [1] Ability for American Wildlands and other organizations (including state and federal agencies) to prioritize wildlife mitigation on highways based on wildlife linkages and [2] To determine opportunities for collaborative highway wildlife mitigation efforts due to a highway safety component and land ownership patterns.

Background: American Wildlands (AWL), based in Bozeman Montana, has worked on wildlife habitat issues in the U.S. Northern Rockies for 30 years. For the last 15 years, we have focused our conservation actions on wildlife corridor protection for wide-ranging species. In order to effectively protect habitat and ensure movement within wildlife corridors, we have found it is necessary to protect all the elements that make a corridor functional for wildlife use and movement. This requires dealing with a suite of topics, such as maintaining appropriate levels of secure movement habitat, ensuring low levels of habitat fragmentation and minimizing wildlife-human conflicts. In all the corridors in which we have worked, these topics consistently fall into a land management triad of public lands, private lands, and transportation systems. According to the Regional Habitat Connectivity analysis completed through our GIS Lab (project was completed in 2001 and updated in 2006), there are over 150 high quality wildlife corridors in the U.S. Northern Rockies[i]. As a single organization, even while working in partnership with other non-government organizations and agencies, American Wildlands cannot tackle the public, private and transportation issues necessary to fully protect all of these corridors. Therefore, the most important wildlife areas needing conservation must be identified and prioritized.

To do this, in 2007 American Wildlands developed and implemented an expert opinion-based Priority Linkage Assessment (PLA). Through an interview process, which has to date included over 50 wildlife biologists, we identified and rated the most important wildlife corridors (hereafter referred to as linkages) for eight species of carnivores and ungulates. Each linkage was identified and rated by the experts based on ecological value, threat, and opportunity. This has been completed in three of our four U.S. Northern Rockies conservation areas. Go to our Priority Linkage Assessment page to see the maps indicating the conservation area boundaries and PLA results.

Also in 2007, we transformed the transportation element of our Corridors of Life program into its own separate program entitled Safe Passages. This was necessary due to the overwhelming depth and breadth of transportation issues facing each linkage area and the U.S. Northern Rockies as a whole. We know from our own practical conservation experience, that highways including traffic volume and basic highway design can act as a “barrier” to wildlife movement. According to road ecology researchers, these barrier effects result in a loss of functional connectivity for wildlife[ii]. Left unmitigated, the highway may even cause the decline of susceptible populations due to demographic and genetic isolation[iii]. The Safe Passages program, through promoting appropriately designed and strategically placed highway crossing structures and best highway and wildlife management practices, is designed to deal explicitly with the barrier problem which threatens linkage (corridor) conservation.

As of 2008, American Wildlands has worked collaboratively in over seven highway and wildlife mitigation efforts in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, including:

• McArthur Lake area on I-95 in northern Idaho
• Togwotee Pass on Hwy 287 just south of Yellowstone National Park
• the Ninemile Area, northwest of Missoula on I-90
• between Thompson Falls and Plains, Montana on Montana 200
• between Bozeman and Livingston, Montana on Bozeman Pass (Interstate 90)
• near Big Fork, Montana on Montana 206
• between Glacier National Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness, near South Glacier (Highway 2)

Similar to our need to prioritize wildlife linkages, American Wildlands also needs to prioritize highway segments that are most important to conserve to protect linkage habitat. Using our experience in GIS analysis, linkage prioritization, and principles in road ecology, we garnered funding to do a highway-specific prioritization process for transportation routes. Using western Montana as a starting point, we are funded to evaluate and identify where road-kill and wildlife-vehicle collision hotspots exist and where they overlap with linkage areas. In addition, we also want to be able to target highway segments where state improvements to the highway are planned and highway safety is an issue.

Methods: In 2005, the GIS Lab at American Wildlands was contracted by the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, to partner with the Western Transportation Institute (WTI), to conduct a hotspot analysis of Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) using road-kill data from MT, ID and WY departments of transportation and state transportation improvement planning data[iv]. To determine overlap with important wildlife habitat data we used American Wildlands’ Regional Habitat Connectivity results and Reid Noss’ ”megasite” locations[v]. We plan to use the analysis methods for the GYE hotspot analysis project as a baseline for the western Montana assessment. Currently, other approaches to using road-kill and wildlife-vehicle collision data are being evaluated[vi],[vii]. Appropriate methods from these additional projects will be compared to the GYE methodology. Using our own expertise, as well as the advisement of research staff at the Western Transportation Institute[viii], we will determine a preferred analysis approach.

For this analysis, the following data sets will be used:

• AWL’s priority linkage area information
• MT Department of Transportation’s road-kill and wildlife-vehicle collision data sets
• MT Department of Transportation’s Statewide Transportation Improvement Planning (STIP) data
• Statewide cadastral (CAMA) parcel-level ownership data

Timeline:

April-May 2008: Literature survey and review of other hotspot analysis efforts and gain feedback on project goals and methods (from relevant state and federal agencies and organizations, such as MDT, MTFWP, USFS, USFWS, FHWA, WTI, county planning departments, and land trusts).

May-June 2008: Data preparation and hotspot analysis.

June-July 2008: Hotspot intersection with wildlife linkage information, as well as MDT state transportation improvement areas and land ownership.

July-August 2008: Hotspots prioritization based on overlap with important wildlife linkages, STIPS, and select land-use patterns.

August-September 2008: GIS data products finalized, map production, analysis report and recommendations.

September-October 2008: Sharing of GIS data products and report, via the internet and an interactive map server which will allow data viewing and GIS data layer downloads.

Products: A series of GIS data products that will be available to other organizations from this analysis:

1) Road-kill hotspot GIS data layer (hotspots defined as areas where higher than average number of road-kill events and/or higher than average highway accidents have occurred)
2) Wildlife-vehicle collision hotspot GIS data layer (hotspots defined as areas where higher than average number of wildlife-vehicle collisions have occurred)
3) Areas indicating where intersections between wildlife linkages, wildlife killed on highways and areas of highway safety concern occur
4) Areas where the above intersections correspond with a planned highway project
5) Land ownership patterns in the hotspot areas, which will indicate what kind of land management should be encouraged if and when highway/wildlife mitigation actions are initiated

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[i] Olimb, S., and Williamson, E.R. "Regional Habitat Connectivity Analysis." Bozeman: American Wildlands, 2007. 1-29.

[ii] Crooks, K. R., and M. Sanjayan. “Connectivity Conservation”. Conservation Biology Book Series, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2006.

[iii] Forman, R. et al. "Road Ecology: science and solutions." Washington: Island Press, 2003

[iv] Hardy, A., Willer, S., and Roberts, E. "A Preliminary Assessment of Wildlife-Transportation Issues in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem." Bozeman, Montana: Greater Yellowstone Coalition, 2005.

[v] Noss, R.F., Carroll, C., Vance-Borland, K., and Wuerthner, G. "A multicriteria assessment of the irreplaceability and vulnerability of sites in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem." Conservation Biology. (2002) 16: 894-908.

[vi] Crooks, Kevin, et al. "Roads and Connectivity in Colorado: Animal-vehicle collisions, wildlife mitigation structures, and lynx-roadway interactions." Colorado: Colorado Department of Transportation Research Branch, 2008. 1-187.

[vii] Austin, J., Viani, K., and Hammond, F. "Vermont Wildlife Linkage Habitat Analysis" Vermont: Vermont Agency of Transportation, 2006. 1-23.

[viii] Cooperation between AWL and WTI on this project has been discussed between this paper’s author and Rob Ament, Road Ecology Program Coordinator. While both parties agree that cooperation is desired, exact terms for collaboration have yet to be determined.