Category Archives: road ecology

Connecticut Mountain Lion Struck By Car

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A mountain lion was struck and killed by a car on a Connecticut highway Saturday morning (June 11). News reports say Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection officials believe it to be the same animal that was spotted in Greenwich, Connecticut earlier that week. The reports also mention that it is likely a captive animal that escaped or was released.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service declared the mountain lion extirpated from the East back in March. Captives roaming free and the occasional wild wanderer should keep the Internet humming for years to come.

See reports in the Hartford Courant, and NBC News.

Update: The Connecticut DEP press release.

Photo: Connecticut State Police/Ct. DEP

Bighorn sheep use overpass

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Photo: Arizona Game & Fish

Bighorn sheep have already been photographed using a wildlife highway overpass in Arizona, south of Hoover Dam. The overpasses were completed in January.

Arizona Game and Fish officials were concerned when they heard that Highway 93, in northwest Arizona, was going to be widened. The area is home to the nation’s largest contiguous population of bighorn sheep. Experience had shown that big horn sheep are wary of wildlife underpasses, which are much more popular with the sheep’s predators. Since bighorn sheep like to stay high, and were approaching the highway from the ridgelines anyway, four overpasses were incorporated into the 15-mile-long highway expansion project.

For more information about the project and the results, read this article in the Prescott Daily Courier. You can find information on the project from the Arizona Game and Fish Department here, and includes video.

Stats on two threats to birds

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A study of a Wisconsin wind farm found that raptors mostly avoided the site, resulting in a big reduction of raptors in the area after the turbines went up. It also found that red-tailed hawks and turkey vultures took the most risks near the turbines, although red-tails were the only raptors found dead in the wind farm. Read the open-access article in The Journal of Applied Ecology here.

Also in the Journal of Applied Ecology, Dutch researchers found that birds breeding near noisy roadways had smaller clutch sizes than other birds. When the roads were noisy in April, the birds had fewer fledglings, regardless of clutch size. The species studied was Parus major. The paper, again, open access, is here.

Stats on two threats to birds

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A study of a Wisconsin wind farm found that raptors mostly avoided the site, resulting in a big reduction of raptors in the area after the turbines went up. It also found that red-tailed hawks and turkey vultures took the most risks near the turbines, although red-tails were the only raptors found dead in the wind farm. Read the open-access article in The Journal of Applied Ecology here.

Also in the Journal of Applied Ecology, Dutch researchers found that birds breeding near noisy roadways had smaller clutch sizes than other birds. When the roads were noisy in April, the birds had fewer fledglings, regardless of clutch size. The species studied was Parus major. The paper, again, open access, is here.