Category Archives: New Mexico

Highway Crossing Success Story — Part 3 — The Results

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A mule-deer’s eye view of the project.

Four years after the electricity first flowed through the fences and shock-mats of the Tijeras Canyon wildlife collision mitigation project, it’s safe to say the project is a success. Collisions between vehicles and wildlife in the canyon have been drastically reduced. Still, you can learn not only what to do from the project, but gather some tips on what to avoid when putting together your own project too.

Read about this project’s successes in the last installment of this exclusive report, here.

Highway Crossing Success Story — Part 2 — The Solution

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Today we’ll tackle New Mexico’s plan to reduce collisions between vehicles and wildlife on a busy skein of highways outside of its largest city. The plan included state-of-the-art technology and techniques and makes a worthy blueprint for other ambitious highway mitigation highway projects.

Read the details of the wildlife collision mitigation plan here.

Tomorrow we’ll discuss how it all worked out.

Photo: courtesy Tijeras Canyon Safe Passage Coalition

Highway Crossing Success Story — Part 1 — The Problem

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Two weeks ago we mentioned a vehicle-wildlife collision mitigation project in New Mexico that had installed cutting-edge electro-shock mats to prevent wildlife from crossing a highway. The switch was flipped on those mats four years ago and there has been plenty of time to evaluate whether the ambitious and comprehensive mitigation project worked.

In a State Wildlife Research News exclusive report, over the next three days we’ll take a look at the wildlife collision problem at Tijeras Canyon, the state-of-the-art suite of solutions installed to solve it, and what has happened there over the last four years.

Today, we’ll take a look at the wildlife collision problem. Does this highway resemble any that you worry about?

Read part one of the story here.

Photo: I-40 east of Albuquerque, NM. Photo credit: courtesy of the Tijeras Canyon Safe Passage Coalition.

How Did the Animal Cross the Road? The Shocking Answer

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One problem with fencing off highways so that large animals don’t wander on is that exits, entering roadways, and driveways can’t be fenced off. Animals on highways cause accidents, injury, and sometimes death for both the animal and passengers in the car that hits them. Often, fencing is crossed off the list of possibilities for directing wildlife crossings because there is simply too much other pavement entering the highway that can’t be fenced.

The California Department of Transportation is installing mats that deliver an electric shock to animals entering a highway in southern California. The stretch of Highway 101 has a problem with large animals causing accidents. The mats will be most helpful for keeping bears off the highway. The mats won’t shock cars or people wearing shoes.

Read the whole story in the San Luis Obispo Tribune.

This isn’t the first time shock mats have been used to keep wildlife off a highway. Four years ago New Mexico installed the mats as part of a whole suite of devices installed to reduce wildlife-caused accidents east of Albuquerque.
New Mexico Game & Fish press release
The most recent news on the project appears to be from The Christian Science Monitor, three years ago.
The Tijeras Canyon Safe Passage Coalition Web site looks like it hasn’t been updated since then.

Photo: Just a generic highway. No relation to the two mentioned.