Highway Wildlife Collisions
Wildlife and Transportation
In 2007, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) was awarded federal funding by the Idaho Transportation Department (ITD) to carry out two statewide projects, both sharing the goal of making Idaho's roads safer for drivers and wildlife.
The project objectives are:
- Develop a statewide map and database of important "wildlife linkage" areas in relation to Idaho's highways and roads.
Wildlife linkage areas offer needed habitat requirements for wildlife populations and are critical for providing areas for wildlife movement across the landscape, such as seasonal mule deer migration routes. By incorporating linkage area information into transportation management decisions, transportation officials, land managers, and other interested parties will be able to make more informed assessments regarding the needs of wildlife in future highway projects.
The Idaho Highway Wildlife Linkage site is an online Wiki that allows all the Idaho wildlife-highway linkages and associated information to be viewed and commented on in an easy to navigate format.
The following links are to the interim wildlife linkage reports completed to date:
- Develop a statewide online wildlife-vehicle collision database tool to better document and monitor wildlife mortality caused by vehicles.
The wildlife-vehicle collision database is a central repository for road kill data from state and federal roadways throughout the state of Idaho. This data is being collected by personnel from ITD, IDFG, and other agencies, and is being maintained by IDFG in cooperation with ITD.
Besides acting as a central repository, the database also allows users to enter and search wildlife-vehicle mortality data for all state and federal roadways in Idaho, potentially benefiting many interested people. The primary goal of this database is to enhance wildlife-vehicle data collection and management, which will allow wildlife mortality areas along Idaho's roadways to be better identified and documented. This is important to both IDFG, as they manage Idaho's limited wildlife resources, and ITD, as they manage Idaho's roadways for safe travel.
Link to the
wildlife-vehicle collision database tool.