Critters in the corridor

Cooperative effort maps Middle Fork wildlife crossings

For the last two years, people have been quietly spying on wildlife in the Middle Fork Flathead corridor.

They have been watching their movements, where they cross U.S. 2, the Middle Fork River and the railroad tracks. They have amassed a database and developed maps.

The information will be available for the Montana Department of Transportation or BNSF Railway to consider building wildlife crossing structures as part of any future railroad or highway construction project.

"It is kind of neat, because it has been quiet and low key," said John Waller, a Glacier National Park wildlife biologist. "A lot of wildlife crossing projects sort of emerge as a crisis."

Example: Flathead Valley residents recently scrambled to raise money to pay for a wildlife crossing as part of a construction project currently under way on Montana 206 south of Columbia Falls.

"We're looking ahead to the future," Waller said of the wildlife monitoring project that has been carried out by partners in the Great Northern Environmental Stewardship Area. "We know from other places and other cases that it's necessary … We are collecting data so that when some project ensues we can make it more wildlife friendly."

And safer for people.

Tom Bengtson saw plenty of road kill and accidents caused by wildlife in his 30 years working for the Department of Transportation at West Glacier.

"I saw one little buck total out three cars once. They were tailgating each other when the first car hit the buck," said Bengtson, who was one of the more informative sources for the GNESA mapping project.

"Over a 30-year period, you sure get to know where the crossings are, seasonally and everything," Bengtson said. "And of course, you are picking [carcasses] up off the road, so you get to know them real good."

Bengtson routinely patrolled the 30-mile stretch between Coram and Essex, and over time, he saw a noticeable increase in deer and elk numbers.

"There's just no question about it," he said. "We were definitely seeing more game along the road."

And there was a noticeable increase in road kill. For the last decade, the West Glacier road crew started keeping records, which have been incorporated into the GNESA mapping project.

Bengtson said each year roughly 50 to 70 deer are killed in the corridor, along with two to five elk, a couple of moose and a bear.

Rich Clough coordinated the mapping project as a contractor for GNESA. It is just one in a series of similar efforts on other Western Montana highways that he has carried out under a program for the University of Montana.

The Middle Fork mapping project, he said, involved two working groups that included highway workers, rafting guides, landowners, railroad employees and even a school bus driver.

"They know where the animals are," Clough said.

Most significant, perhaps, was the input of more than 50 BNSF Railway engineers and conductors who were interviewed for the project.

"They were just keenly aware of where the wildlife crossed [the railroad tracks] and they were interested in how to protect them," said Dan Vincent, GNESA's executive director.

Designing effective crossings can be a complex task, having to account for different species, seasonal use and the possibility of future development on adjacent private lands.

There's no sense in putting in a crossing that leads to private land that may be converted to a subdivision some day, so planning for crossings often requires a tandem effort to secure conservation easements, Clough said.

"The topographic constraints, the engineering constraints, as well as snow loading and the river and the national park on one side … there's just a lot of things that could complicate things" in the Middle Fork corridor, said Pat Basting, a biologist with the Department of Transportation who has been involved with the design of dozens of wildlife crossings on U.S. 93.

"It requires that you go through a very careful thought process," Basting said, adding that the GNESA mapping project will certainly help that process.

In the last few years, more than 30 crossing structures were built into U.S. 93 between Hamilton and Lolo and more than 42 structures were built into the highway between Evaro and Polson, Basting said. The structures range from small culverts for skunks, foxes and other small critters up to large tunnels for bears, deer and elk. Some structures involve wing fencing to funnel animals to the crossings.

Basting said the Confederated Salish-Kootenai Tribes wildlife program is leading an ongoing monitoring effort to determine the effectiveness of the crossings.

So far, the results are promising.

Remote cameras have picked up images of mountain lions, bobcats, deer, black bears and other animals using the crossings on the Flathead Reservation, Basting said.

"On several of the crossing structures, yes, we do have a huge amount of animal species using them," Basting said.

Future wildlife crossings in the Middle Fork will go a long way toward maintaining an ecological connectivity that fortunately remains intact between the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex and Glacier Park, said Waller, the park's biologist.

Past research led by Waller found that grizzly bears routinely cross the corridor largely because U.S. 2 still has relatively low traffic volume, around 2,000 vehicles per day.

Waller's research found that highways in the Canadian Rockies with volumes exceeding 7,000 vehicles a day have effectively become barriers to wildlife movement.

The GNESA mapping project is continuing this summer with a University of Montana graduate student locating game trails along the corridor.

"He's going to be mapping them with GPS," Waller said. "And they will become another data layer in that digital library."

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com