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Mountain News: Design teams working on wildlife overpasses

VAIL, Colo. - Trucks, cars, and pickups towing boats on Interstate 70 pushed up Vail Pass steadily on Saturday afternoon. Many drivers doubtlessly squinted at the roadside and wondered at the collection of people wearing hard hats.

VAIL, Colo. - Trucks, cars, and pickups towing boats on Interstate 70 pushed up Vail Pass steadily on Saturday afternoon. Many drivers doubtlessly squinted at the roadside and wondered at the collection of people wearing hard hats.

Few could have guessed. Most fundamentally, those wearing hard hats were intent on figuring out ways to get wildlife across highways safely - and cheaply.

Teams of landscape architects and complementary disciplines from three counties and two continents had gathered at the "problem" site two miles from the summit of Vail Pass. The first roadkill after Canada lynx were reintroduced into Colorado in 1999 was squashed at the site. Cougar, moose and bears have also inadvertently testified to their use by tripping camera shutters. While I-70 is Colorado's major east-west highway, the Gore Range - which the highway traverses at Vail Pass - seems to be a major north-south route for wildlife.

Keeping hooves and hoods apart has long vexed both wildlife biologists and highway engineers. While many things have been tried, only the combination of highway overpasses and underpasses such as are found in Canada's Banff National Park have clearly worked.

Some species use the underpasses readily, but other species - especially Canada lynx, grizzly bears, and moose - seem to dislike them. For them to cross busy four-lane highways, overpasses work better.

In the West, the first overpasses were built in Banff. Some 100 to 125 collisions with elk were occurring annually during the early 1980s. Officials from Parks Canada feared eventual human fatalities as well as the more predictable death of elk.

The fear was no idle one. Wildlife biologists in the mid-1990s estimated 210 annual human fatalities in the United States from auto-animal encounters, plus 29,000 human injuries, and more than $1 billion in property damage.

The overpasses spanning the four-lane TransCanada Highway in Banff National Park certainly are impressive. Large and sturdy enough to accommodate 18-wheeled trucks, they are covered by vegetation and dirt.

But they are also very expensive. Tony Clevenger, a researcher with the Western Transportation Institute, says he believes highway engineers began sharing blueprints without rethinking the designs.

The result has been wildlife overpasses with heavy price tags, more than $12 million for the newest overpasses in Banff. As a result, there have been very few others: one each in Nevada, Utah and British Columbia, with another now under construction north of Missoula, Mont.

With that in mind, a consortium of interests sponsored the ARC: International Wildlife Crossing Infrastructure Design Competition. Announced last winter, it drew 36 applications from seven countries. From those entries were culled the five finalists: two from New York City, one from Philadelphia, with the final two from Toronto and Amsterdam.

These five finalists will have until early November to submit designs for review by a jury headed by Charles Waldheim, who chairs the landscape architecture section of Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. The sponsors hope that the competition yields new materials, methods and insights - and not just at Vail Pass.

 

Wider highway not welcomed

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. - Although it's now two hours away from the closest interstate highway, Jackson Hole may be getting five lanes of its own. And some locals seem none too happy about it.

State and federal highway officials want to widen a two-lane highway for about six miles south of Jackson. They say the highway widening must be done to make it safer, and anything short of five lanes won't be enough to accommodate growth traffic during the next 25 years.

The Jackson Hole News & Guide reports considerable heartburn. Teton County officials, for example, had proposed a more limited widening. Hank Phibbs, a county commissioner, said the local proposal was "more sensitive of the landscape, more acceptable to our community, and perfectly safe as a highway."

Local environmentalists worry about creating an even greater barrier to wildlife. State and federal officials insist that won't be the case, as there may be some wildlife underpasses.

But finally, the highway jars Jackson Hole's self-image.

"We consider ourselves a rural community," said Louis Lasley, public lands director for the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance. "Even though they call it a rural five lane, I have a hard time imagining five lanes in the same context."

 

Second-home owners not on list

PARK CITY, Utah - Organizers of the Sundance Film Festival have decided to narrow the door. They allow Utah residents to purchase passes and ticket packages at discounted rates. But the Park Record notes that many vacation-home owners have also purchased the discounted passes, using property-tax statements and utility bills. Not good enough anymore, says Sundance. Henceforth, it'll take a Utah driver's license.

 

Shoving match going on in Vail

VAIL, Colo. - Many visitors to ski towns see a homogeneity in the local population, but the reality is often very different. This is particularly true of the local towns and the ski area operator.

In Vail, one former town manager likened the relationship to two convicts handcuffed together and let loose in a jungle. They kind of have to come to terms with one another, but it's never particularly easy.

This has been evident for the last decade in the parking situation. For several reasons, the existing parking garages - although large - have been inadequate during ski season, particularly weekends, holidays and powder days. Cars spill over onto frontage roads, creating what for some is an aesthetic issue and for others a safety concern.

Then comes real estate. Vail Resorts, the ski area operator, has a $1 billion project, called Ever Vail, now before the town. It will include a lot of parking. But enough?

The Vail Daily , in a recent dispatch, describes what sounds like a new round of shoving between the town and ski company.

Andy Daly, a former executive of the ski and development company, who now sits on the town council, says providing enough parking to prevent the frontage-road parking has become the town's top priority. He's adamant the solution must be delivered by 2012 - the 50 th anniversary of the opening of the ski area.

Asked about the tension, Vail Mayor Dick Cleveland said the competition and tension is natural, even healthy. The town government answers to taxpayers, while the company answers to stockholders, he said.

 

North should expect snow

KETCHUM, Idaho - La NiƱa weather typically provides lots of snow for the more northerly resorts, such as Sun Valley, but drier and sunnier conditions for places like Telluride. This year probably will be no exception. Chris Hattings, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service, tells the Idaho Mountain Express that this coming winter will likely be snowy and cloudy in Ketchum and other local towns.

 

Real locals in Jackson Hole

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. - An archaeologist working along a highway south of Jackson has been sorting through past human habitation - a past that likely goes back 9,000 to 9,500 years, perhaps even longer.

The archaeologist tells the Jackson Hole News & Guide that the site clearly shows that people lived in Jackson Hole 5,500 to 8,000 years ago, what they called the Early Archaic period.

By then, the glaciers had mostly been gone for several thousand years and the climate was warmer than that of our own. Rich Adams, an archaeologist, tells the newspaper that these mountains provided a refuge to the hot, dry conditions in the Great Basin of Utah, Nevada and southern Idaho.

Later, in times with a climate much like our own, 2,500 to 5,000 years ago, there is evidence of heavy occupation. "They were coming here for thousands of years, and they left all kinds of stuff here," he said.

 

Hot wires deter bruins

LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - Bears broke into the vacation home of John Cunningham four times in two years. Fed up, he began looking for ways to deter the bears at his cabin on the west shore of Lake Tahoe.

Although now $400 to $600 poorer, Cunningham believes he has hit on the way to keep the bears from pillaging in his pantry, loading up on calories courtesy of his ice cream. He had wires electrified with 9,500 volts strung across his doors and windows, explains the Sierra Sun .

Doug McNair, who has a business specializing in installing bear-deterrent systems, said he has installed 17 such electrical systems so far, with complete success. "We've had zero bear break-ins with the wiring systems," he said.

The voltage will not kill birds and squirrels, because the wire is not grounded. Small children who touch the wires will get a jolt they'll likely not forget, but the charge shouldn't be enough to cause injury.

Bears likewise aren't likely to forget the jolt, which is why the contractor believes neighbourhoods in which such electric wires protect doors and windows will train bears to avoid homes altogether.

 

Toppled tree kills two horses

GRANBY, COLO. - Google Earth reveals a mass of red forests in Grand County, the epicentre of the bark beetle epidemic that is well on its way to killing 90 per cent of the lodgepole pine in Colorado. Those dead trees have now started toppling over in the wind - and recently killed two prized horses being boarded northwest of Granby.

The Sky Hi Daily News explains reports that the owner prized these two horses in different ways. The 12-year-old thoroughbred was called Sugarloaf. She was a "good mountain horse," said Kyle Korth. "You could hobble her, pack her, rider her, hunt off of her - she was a good horse."

The second horse, a two-year-old Arabian filly, was a hoped-for retirement investment. Keeley Waters, an artist and bartender, explained that it took two years of artificial insemination, aided by the expertise of a top Arabian horse breeder, to get the filly.

The wind toppled the tree, causing power lines to go down. The curious horses apparently went to investigate.

 

Lament for loss of quiet

WHITEFISH, Mont. - If the economy has dulled the house building in mountain towns, there's still a bitter taste in the mouth of one Montana resident.

Writing in the Whitefish Pilot , the resident laments the changing face of her neighbourhood. First, a neighbour built a garage and put an apartment atop it, which is rented out to those who can look into her backyard.

"These visitors seem to have a propensity for parties and late-night music and drunken chatter," she writes. "All this noise rolling into my windows with the cool evening breeze."

Then there's the new three-storey house across the street. "This house stares at my house like some big eye, the sun reflecting from the windows like burning spotlights," she says.

She wonders what happened to the small town in Montana that she loved.

Just guessing, but maybe others decided that they loved it, too.

 

Summit keen on recycling

FRISCO, Colo. - What a determined and enthusiastic band of recyclers Colorado's Summit County has. Local recycling officials report that the county achieves a waste-diversion rate of 22 per cent. That's higher than your average suburban community, although far from a contender in Colorado. The highest waste diversion rate, 53 per cent, belongs to Loveland, a town of about 50,000 located north of Denver.