Highway 2 east of Gananoque is a busy thoroughfare with an 80-kilometre-per-hour speed limit. For tiny, slow-moving hatchlings, crossing that divide at the height of mid-morning traffic often has deadly consequences.
Every hour of every day, countless animals — turtles, frogs, snakes, small mammals, birds, butterflies, skunks, foxes, coyotes, deer, bears — are struck and killed by cars and trucks on Ontario highways. Many of these events are never even noticed, and fewer still are ever counted. The 14,000 animal-vehicle collisions reported in an average year on provincial highways include only incidents that cause vehicle damage, making the number meaningless from an ecological standpoint. Additionally, these highways account for less than 1 percent of all Ontario roads.
Every hour of every day, countless animals — turtles, frogs, snakes, small mammals, birds, butterflies, skunks, foxes, coyotes, deer, bears — are struck and killed by cars and trucks on Ontario highways. Many of these events are never even noticed, and fewer still are ever counted. The 14,000 animal-vehicle collisions reported in an average year on provincial highways include only incidents that cause vehicle damage, making the number meaningless from an ecological standpoint. Additionally, these highways account for less than 1 percent of all Ontario roads.
The tally is a grim one, but it comes with an upside. Jones’s research, completed last fall, marked the conclusion of an unprecedented series of multi-year roadkill studies coordinated by the Algonquin to Adirondacks Collaborative (A2A), a cross-border, not-for-profit organization that works with local municipalities and conservation and community groups to promote ecological connectivity in the region.
Common casualties: Multi-year roadkill surveys counted tens of thousands of dead animals on Highway 2, Highway 401 and the Thousand Islands Parkway
Now comes the second phase. Ryan Danby, an associate professor of geography, planning and environmental studies at Queen’s and a member of A2A’s road ecology committee, is using the combined data — which pinpoints collision hot spots by location, species and time of year — to draft a map of wildlife pathways through the area. The data will then be incorporated into an A2A report to be published later this year that will lay out a blueprint for a large-scale network of measures intended to spur major reductions in animal-vehicle collisions throughout the area. Likely elements include protective fencing, new and refurbished culverts, expanded underpasses and maybe even a wildlife overpass spanning the 401.
Deadly data: Ryan Danby and A2A Collaborative researchers use maps to plot roadkill hotspots
ONE OF THE FIRST JOKES kids learn asks why the chicken crossed the road. The answer could turn that question into a teachable ecology moment: “Because it had no other way to get to the other side.”
For generations, the toll cars have taken on animal populations and the fragmentation of wildlife habitat caused by roads have been problems hiding in plain sight — a dead squirrel on a city street, a skunk carcass on the highway, a deer in the headlights.
Mandy Karch, coordinator of the Ontario Road Ecology Group, a not-for-profit organization that advocates for wildlife protection, sees signs of change – both in the recognition of the magnitude of the issue and the understanding of how transportation networks can be designed to ease animal passage and enhance habitat connectivity. She cites the Long Point Causeway Improvement Project in Port Rowan, on Lake Erie, as an important milestone. The 3.5-kilometre causeway, which separates the lake from the Big Creek National Wildlife Area, connects the mainland with the point. Each year, causeway traffic would kill an estimated 10,000 turtles and other small animals. “It was the fourth-deadliest road in North America,” says Karch. But a $2.7-million community-driven project, completed in 2016, to install a network of signs, protective fencing and 12 wildlife underpasses has cut the death toll for reptiles by more than 50 percent. The project attracted lots of media attention, Karch notes, raising awareness of animal mortality on roads.
In addition, over the past six years the provincial government has built two of its largest highway installations that incorporate ecological features. Located on Highway 69 between Parry Sound and Sudbury and on the Rt. Hon. Herb Gray Parkway extension of Highway 401 in Windsor, these installations include dedicated wildlife overpasses, underpasses and, in the case of Highway 69, fencing along 16 kilometres of highway already constructed to funnel animals toward them.
Safe passage: A wildlife overpass spans Highway 69 south of Sudbury
Almost any species is a potential roadkill victim, but reptiles and amphibians are of particular concern. In the A2A surveys, frogs made up more than half the total of animals killed. Province-wide, turtles are a big worry. All of Ontario’s eight turtle species are listed as at risk, and road mortality plays a role in their population decline. “Turtles come to the [roadsides] to nest,” says Tricia Stinnissen of Tobermory, who did graduate research on wildlife road mortality on the Bruce Peninsula. “They’re also slow moving. So they get hit.”
A2A’s OVERALL RAISON D’ETRE IS fostering landscape-scale ecological connectivity. The organization takes its inspiration from the story of a moose named Alice that was fitted with a radio-tracking collar in Adirondack Park in the United States in 1998. Alice showed up about two years later in Algonquin Provincial Park, having swum across the St. Lawrence and crossed the 401 during her 570-kilometre migration. “It’s a very good symbol of what A2A is about,” says David Miller, A2A’s executive director. “We’re trying to allow nature to move through the A2A corridor. Automatically, you begin to look at what are … impediments to that, and highways are obviously a major one.”
As its name suggests, most of A2A’s work entails collaborations with other organizations. This includes assisting local land trusts and nature clubs in adopting “conservation action planning” techniques that ensure their work supports the needs of the corridor as a whole. The road ecology project differs, says Miller, in that A2A is initiating an on-the-ground effort to meet a need that no existing group has addressed.
Cameron Smith: Naturalist wants to reduce vehicle-wildlife collisions in the Frontenac Arch
“The scientific foundation wasn’t there to allow us to put the pieces together, so we had to go out and get it,” says Miller. Once the research is published, A2A will return to the role it more typically plays: working with stakeholders to pool resources, expertise and fundraising efforts.
Danby cautions that arriving at specific proposals will be a complicated process and will include considerations beyond highway and habitat data. “If we’ve got a recommended location for an overpass, but the land on either side of the road is owned by private owners and there’s no long-term assurance it will be protected, that’s a challenge we’ll have to address,” he says. “On the other hand, if we find an appropriate location that’s owned by Parks Canada on one side and there’s a conservation area on the other, then maybe that’s a more suitable location [for that overpass].”
Triple threat: A segment of Highway 401 in the Frontenac Arch study area
Sitting at his dining table, Smith pulls out a map of the St. Lawrence River and Great Lakes, and taps his finger down hard on the Frontenac Arch. “We need a paradigm change,” he argues, decrying the thousands of animals dying on the roads. “We need to start accepting that we share nature.” And he has little patience with worries that the recommended measures will probably cost millions of dollars to implement. “Look at that map,” he says. “Animals have been using that passage for thousands of years. Look at that map and ask yourself, What’s more important?”
This article was originally published in ON Nature magazine Summer 2018. Images courtesy of pixabay.com/Bernell; pixabay.com/Avalon_Mists; Ryan Danby; Kari Gunson/EkoCare International; Brian Banks (bottom two)