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Vermont agencies outline strategy to reduce wildlife–vehicle collisions by resizing culverts, building shelves
Summary
Vermont Fish & Wildlife and the Agency of Transportation told the House Transportation Committee they have identified 1,285 ecologically important structures statewide and are prioritizing 67 in poor condition for resizing or replacement to improve wildlife passage, resilience and public safety.
Jens Hilke, conservation planner with the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, and an environmental policy manager at the Agency of Transportation presented a joint plan to reduce wildlife–vehicle collisions and preserve habitat connectivity.
The agencies said collisions are costly and frequent: "vehicle collisions result in $8,000,000,000 in property damage every year," Hilke told the committee, citing national estimates, and offered per-collision cost figures of about $7,000 for a deer crash and about $30,000 for a moose crash. They argued that properly sized road structures can advance both safety and ecological goals.
The presentation framed the work at three scales: landscape, species and project. At the landscape scale the agencies are using the Vermont…
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