Group says Yellowstone should reduce roadkill

[Delw]

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. - The National Park Service needs to do more to protect wildlife from motorists, an environmental advocacy group said.



Jeff Ruch, executive director of the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said park officials are widening too many roads, which leads to higher speeds and more wildlife killed. He said other parks have systems that alert drivers to wildlife on roadways.


"The planning is around road construction," Ruch said. "They don't have kind of a comprehensive policy, even though it is by far the largest source of (wildlife) mortality."


An average of 103 mammals weighing more than 30 pounds have been killed each year from 1989 to 2003 due to vehicle collisions in Yellowstone. The total includes 566 elk, 456 mule deer and 192 bison, Yellowstone officials said.


Yellowstone spokeswoman Cheryl Matthews said most roads in the park have a 45 mph speed limit and areas where roads are being upgraded have a lower wildlife mortality rate because the construction improves visibility.


Matthews said the park has experimented with crossing sensors that would alert motorists with flashing lights if wildlife stepped onto the roadway, but technical problems halted the effort.


Ruch said more research needs to be done on the effect of roads on wildlife.


"The way they treat roadkill, they treat it like the weather," he said. "It gets better or worse, and they don't know why, and there's nothing they can do about it."

 

[BigHornRam]

Time to make Jellystone "walk-in only".

 

[danr55]

They need ot either take out all those damned dangerous animals or put up fences.. or outlaw all those ATVs and snow moiles.. :BLEEP: :MAD :MAD .. I hate it when that happens. |oo :MAD hump hump hump

 

[antlerrick]

I have a hard time figuring out why people drive like they do in Yellowstone. Every time I go it seems that I am the slowest driver up there. I drive slow to look for the animals, not to see how many I can crash my outfit into!!!

It blows me away to hear someone say "uh...duh...I didn't see that 2000 pound, 7 foot tall, 9 foot long buffalo standing in the middle of the the road"..... "I was only going 60"...."DUH"..

Guess maybe at night it could happen, but then I slow down even more...somewhere in the back of my mind I recall someone telling me that there were animals in the park?????? Wonder why they're there???? LOL