Program launched to reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions

During the month of May, the Montana Wildlife and Transportation Partnership will be taking applications to address wildlife-vehicle collisions on Montana highways.

The Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks announced the program in a Wednesday press release. 

“After years of planning, MWTP celebrates a new opportunity to further public-private partnerships that reduce wildlife and transportation conflicts and improve wildlife connectivity in Montana,” said Malcolm Long, Montana Department of Transportation director, in the statement.

Montana has one of the nation’s highest incidences of wildlife-vehicle collisions per capita. Each year, MDT maintenance crews collect more than 6,000 wildlife animal carcasses, and more than 10% of all crashes in Montana result from wildlife collisions. Nationally, WVCs kill more than 1 million large mammals, cause hundreds of human fatalities, and lead to more than 26,000 injuries, all at an annual cost of nearly $11 billion nationwide.

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To identify areas where work can be done, the new planning tool is aimed to help local groups identify areas of greatest need for decreasing wildlife-vehicle collisions.

The tool can identify 1- to 2-mile state highway segments that may be candidates for wildlife accommodation projects. 

The next application cycle

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