[0:14] Here, thanks everybody for the comment on this beautiful Friday afternoon.

[0:19] My name is Adam Palmer, environmental policy planner here at Eagle County.

[0:25] And it's really our pleasure here at the county to have Julia Kinschen and Jim Dawes with the Eagle Valley Land Trust sort of introducing

[0:35] her, this afternoon, looking at how we plan for and look at solutions to land use.

[0:44] and wildlife migration patterns in Eagle County.

[0:49] So a lot of great works have been done

[0:50] and we're all looking forward to learning more about that

[0:54] and that has been a fine some next steps this afternoon.

[0:57] So with that, I'll hand it off to Jim

[0:59] and I'll pass around this signage sheet for everybody.

[1:03] Thank you, Adam.

[1:04] So I'm going to introduce you to the Eagle Valley

[1:06] and the interest in wanting to give a little bit of history

[1:09] about how we've got here and how to actually

[1:13] to help inform discussion on land use here, but before any of us were here, this was all, we had

[1:21] our mountains and our valleys and the rivers running through the valleys in the 1872s,

[1:25] the homestead act allowed people to come and claim their claim land. So they claim the river

[1:30] bottoms along the best places to live, and that hit us created a swath of private land

[1:37] through our outer county along the river bottoms. So you have these beautiful river bottoms

[1:42] and mountains on the other side, and animals moving through these river bottoms as part of

[1:48] their migration in places for shelter.

[1:54] And with the Homestead Act, there are a lot of

[1:59] these all the land was ranching land for many, many decades, and then along came roads, major

[2:04] highways, through our valleys, development, and you started getting these constraints on animals

[2:11] being able to move through and that really created the idea of land conservation and just a little

[2:18] bit on Eagle Valley land trust. We worked with willing property owners who want to preserve

[2:23] their property. The way we work in case you're not clear and a lot of people are in it. Is a

[2:32] willing property owner who wants to conserve land would enter into would promise not to develop their land.

[2:38] And that promises in the form of a contract, we call it conservation easement.

[2:42] And somebody has a hold the contract along with them to make sure that they never

[2:46] never develop their property. And we are the third party, the other side of the contract.

[2:50] So the contracts with us, and we are the organization that makes sure that they hold

[2:55] that promise and perpetuity. A lot of people don't quite understand that that's our role.

[3:00] We work with the county, sometimes the landowners, the county. So we end up having

[3:03] our relationship, a contractual relationship, via these conservation easements,

[3:07] with the county and so you've seen a bunch of properties that actually have

[3:11] recreation on them for the public, which is another great way that we can serve

[3:16] land forever but allow recreation.

[3:20] But so we hold this promise for the benefit of the public.

[3:23] The reason landowners might be interested in doing that is because by working with us,

[3:27] we are basically licensed for the lack of a better word.

[3:30] landowners have the ability in access, they gain eligibility for funding to compensate them

[3:38] for doing the conservation.

[3:40] So, today's conversation will help us inform, as it helped us be informed as a community

[3:45] about the priorities we want to place on conservation through our values to help this connectivity,

[3:51] what's left of it, to be preserved.

[3:53] And we're very lucky today to have to really

[3:55] hinge with Hugo Resolutions.

[3:58] She has a master's in ecology from Duke.

[4:03] She has worked with Southern Rockies ecosystem

[4:05] Project, which many of you may be familiar with.

[4:08] She has worked at the Nature Conservancy with her

[4:11] Edgar Currant, Eco Resolution.

[4:15] She's worked on a really cool project.

[4:17] A lot for Pilotten for Colorado Department of Transportation,

[4:20] such as retrofitting existing bridges for wildlife.

[4:24] wildlife crossing design guidance for the Ministry of Natural Resources

[4:28] and Ontario. You may be familiar with the four year citizen science effort on

[4:33] veil paths a few years back where there were citizens helping photograph wildlife

[4:40] on veil paths to inform where a wildlife crossing may occur and she's also worked

[4:48] on the highway nine project which is if you don't know about it's really cool

[4:52] between silver thorn and crumbling, they're going to be putting in 9, 7 over passes or under passes.

[5:01] So, it's like a bridge going over the road, but the bridge is tired with grass. And it's pretty amazing. So, the study that Julia will be talking about the i70-glogical study is a study of wildlife connectivity problems in a long i70.

[5:21] I identified priorities, and I shall talk about some preliminary recommendations to improve

[5:28] connectivity.

[5:30] I also want to thank Adam for setting this up, and she'll take it away.

[5:39] Well, thanks.

[5:40] It's great to be here.

[5:42] And this is my favorite topics that I've accepted to be able to share this with you.

[5:47] I guess I'm very excited that equal county and stakeholders like Eagle Valley Land Trust are coming together and really interested in having these conversations about how to integrate land use planning and management in the county with some of these opportunities to improve connections across interstate 70, which I have been really the biggest and most continuous barrier to wildlife movement in the Southern Rockies.

[6:16] So these kinds of conversations I think are really essential and happy to share what I know

[6:22] about that connectivity for wildlife with you.

[6:30] So I'm reading this book right now, so it's a little tangent, but it's really, I think

[6:34] it's really fascinating book, it's called The Cation Land, and it's looking at the Colorado

[6:41] mountain towns and how they transition from these places that were these really remote outposts

[6:47] to places that are this tourist-based economy, which is really centered around access and access

[6:54] into these mountain towns is what has really shaped Ego County into into what it is today, and I

[7:01] suddenly of course it's had a major role in shaping this landscape. And this picture here is a

[7:08] So the bottom of the picture is actually towards the top of the pass, and the top of the picture is heading towards Vail.

[7:17] And you can see here a little bit how it is really this roadway in this pretty natural landscape.

[7:24] And it started out with, you know, originally with Highway 6, was the first road to this area.

[7:31] And then things like the black or creek were damped for the black lakes in order to provide

[7:38] fishing access and bring tourism in fishermen and things like that to increase tourism.

[7:44] And then eventually it became I-70, which is a major interstate in Colorado.

[7:49] And we even have a bike path among it.

[7:52] And so you can see kind of the subtle and not-so subtle changes that this access in this road has

[7:58] brought to our landscapes.

[8:04] And as Jim mentioned, when the landscapes on fragmented,

[8:08] we have this continuous forest and wildlife

[8:10] can pretty much roam where they want to.

[8:13] Their movements are dictated by things like terrain

[8:15] and habitat, and that all changes when you put a road

[8:20] through the landscape.

[8:21] The wildlife movements become constraints

[8:23] and their movement patterns can shift.

[8:27] And I think that's something certainly

[8:29] that we've seen along Isevity, particularly in these areas where there's been a lot of

[8:33] development or areas where there's a lot of human activity and access something like the

[8:39] Veil Pest when a recreation area is certainly one example of that.

[8:47] So, when a animal does approach a road, there's a couple of things that can happen.

[8:55] They'll attempt to cross, perhaps, or a lot of those animals are actually repelled from

[9:01] the roadway.

[9:02] It could be because a truck come by at that moment and they get spooked and they say,

[9:08] no, not even, not even going to try that right now.

[9:11] Some of those animals who attempt to cross the road will be killed on that road.

[9:16] And the other animals, they will be able to successfully cross the road, at least this time

[9:20] this road and I think that provides them access to things like food and water and potential

[9:28] meats that they wouldn't be able to get to otherwise.

[9:34] So roads clearly have a lot of impact on our wildlife populations in the United States.

[9:43] We have a lot of roads, not just in the United States, but in the US we have some 4 million

[9:48] miles or roads, and there's over 243 million registered vehicles on those roads.

[9:54] In Colorado alone, we have 8,500 miles of C-DOT administered highways, we also have

[9:59] Bye-bye.

[10:00] Private municipal roads, county roads. And we have some 20,000 miles of national forest roads. We also have the LN Park Service. There's a lot of roads. And if you're an animal trying to traverse a landscape, you're going to be facing a lot of these on your journey.

[10:22] As a result, we see animal vehicle collisions. That's a really visible consequence of interactions between roads and wildlife.

[10:30] There are 1.5 million reported collisions each year in the United States more or less and those are just ones that are reported.

[10:40] So clearly there's a number that go completely unreported and it's been estimated that there's a million vertebrates per day that are killed in this country.

[10:49] So that's quite a significant impact.

[10:53] And in Canada, it was identified as the fourth leading

[10:55] cause, earth deaths.

[10:56] And there's also a huge human component,

[10:58] because there's human fatalities that are associated

[11:01] with these animal vehicle collisions, as well as injuries,

[11:05] property damage, and so forth.

[11:07] So it's a large cost of wildlife human and economic costs

[11:12] that's associated with these kinds of collisions.

[11:18] This is something I like to talk about as track volume.

[11:21] And I think it's really interesting in the context of I-70.

[11:28] Because traffic volume is, it's really easy to dismiss a section of roadway that has really

[11:36] load top traffic volumes.

[11:38] You can say, oh, well, nothing's getting hit.

[11:40] It's not a problem, right?

[11:43] Well, it turns out that's not really the case.

[11:44] Not certainly not from a wildlife perspective.

[11:47] And so what you see here is on this graph.

[11:51] The solid line here are the number or the, let's make sure I get the successful crossings.

[12:01] So what we see as traffic volume increases along the excess, the number of successful crossings

[12:07] actual decreases and the number of more tallities as traffic volume increases, those more tallities go up.

[12:17] So that's pretty intuitive.

[12:18] You're going to, more animals are going to die on the road

[12:20] when there's more cards on the road.

[12:22] But that's only two a certain point,

[12:23] because once traffic volume reaches a certain point,

[12:27] there's more tallities actually decrease again.

[12:30] And that's because fewer animals are actually

[12:32] even attempting to cross the road at that point.

[12:35] And the number of animals repelled from the road,

[12:39] that number is going up.

[12:41] So traffic volume increases.

[12:43] Because you might see lower mortalities because fewer animals are even trying to cross that

[12:49] road.

[12:51] So, if you're looking at analytical collision data, you can't just assume, oh, well, not

[12:58] a problem for wildlife.

[12:59] They don't even want to cross here.

[13:00] It could be they're just not even trying that it's just so much of a barrier that they're

[13:04] not even trying to cross those roads.

[13:07] And certainly that's something we see on I-70,

[13:14] average annual daily traffic volume, that's the AADT that's just your average traffic volume that you see on a roadway segment.

[13:23] And what we found is that in between the range of 3,000 to 5,000 vehicles per day is where we see the greatest number of animals being hit.

[13:32] So that means more animals are trying to cross, but they're not crossing successfully.

[13:40] And at 10,000 vehicles per day, we see that that roadway becomes a near complete barrier

[13:48] for most species of wildlife.

[13:51] To put that in the context of I-70 around .0, there's about 13,000 vehicles per day.

[13:59] at Vale, or at Eagle, it's around 24,000, at Bale that goes up to 34,000, and at Vale Pass,

[14:09] it's around 19,000. So in I-70 in Eagle County, it's in most places double if not more that

[14:17] threshold of 10,000 vehicles per day. So animals are by and large, either not even attempting to

[14:25] or having a really hard time crossing.

[14:28] And we see that reflected when we look

[14:30] at the animal vehicle collision data.

[14:32] When we see those numbers, in a lot of places,

[14:35] the numbers aren't as high as they might be

[14:37] on some of these other roads, like Highway 9.

[14:41] And so it's something to keep in mind

[14:44] that the wildlife impact is still really large,

[14:48] or even larger, because of the traffic volume

[14:51] and not just the roadway footprint itself.

[14:55] And as with most things, the impacts are species.

[15:00] Specific, different animals have different levels of tolerance and it's been estimated that for links, the threshold where that road becomes of barrier is around 4,000 vehicles per day for something like a turtle that's as low as 400 vehicles per day. So, it does vary, it does vary for sure, but these ranges that I was mentioning before are particularly thresholds that we try to look at.

[15:30] If you guys have any questions at any point, feel free to shout them out.

[15:38] Okay, so I did want to give a little bit of history, but without getting too far deep into

[15:45] I-70 and started the planning processes that have been going on there for the last

[15:50] over decade.

[15:53] And it's been a long journey, and anybody who's driven that highway, which is all of us,

[15:59] knows that there is a lot of congestion issues, there is a lot of traffic problems that need

[16:06] to be addressed.

[16:07] So this has been recognized for a while in the late 1900s, they began to see that and federal

[16:15] highways began what's called a draft programmatic impact statements, so that's looking at

[16:19] the various alternatives, what the impacts of each of those are in the associated costs.

[16:25] That process, as some of you may recall, became rather controversial and it was restarted

[16:34] if you will around 2006 with a new administration and they went back and looked at all the

[16:41] and original alternatives and said, okay, well let's take another look at this.

[16:45] Let's do more to engage the communities and look at some of the community values so that

[16:50] we're not, you know, alienating everybody in their interests and that we make sure that we

[16:54] include this in our decision-making processes.

[16:57] So they started what's called the collaborative effort

[17:00] and the context-sensitive solutions process.

[17:04] And ultimately, we're able to come up with a final recommendation

[17:07] and signed a record of decision in 2011.

[17:12] So if we look at the bottom half of this timeline,

[17:17] the pieces that are interesting from a wildlife connectivity standpoint

[17:21] are that at the beginning of the PES process, an interagency committee was born, and that was called

[17:27] the Alive Committee, and Bill was a part of that, and many other people. And that process that's,

[17:35] this was a group of people who were focused exclusively on this issue of how to deal with I70

[17:41] as a barrier to wildlife movement and how to address that. And so that group identified these

[17:47] connectivity zones, which are called officially linkage interference zones, or

[17:52] Liz's for short, and they identified these zones on the map and said, okay, these are

[17:58] the areas that we think are the most important for wildlife movement. And in 2006, there was an

[18:04] interagency MOU, which was drafted. There were various delays and complications, and it wasn't until

[18:11] 2008 that MOU was actually signed, and it was at that time that our group received funding

[18:19] from federal highways and from see that to conduct this ISM and ecological study. So this

[18:24] timing was actually pretty great because we were doing this study at the same time that the PIS was

[18:31] being finished up and conducted and that whole collaborative effort. So we were able to take all the

[18:36] information that we produced and all the data that we created and integrate that into this and

[18:42] have that be a part of CDOT's kind of their decision-making framework and when they go through

[18:47] and look at projects. So our project and this is what I'll talk about more, we were able to look

[18:55] at those connectivity zones that were originally identified and create a more robust, a more transparent

[19:02] process, something that we could have more confidence in the results so that we move forward

[19:07] into implementation, you know, we feel like we're doing the best mitigation in the best place.

[19:12] So that was one of the objectives of our projects.

[19:16] And you'll see here, there between 2011, there's a little gap there.

[19:20] I think I have something to go there because that's what we're missing.

[19:24] So there's recorded decision and got signed.

[19:26] We said, finally, after all these years, we know what we want to do is a capacity solution to improve

[19:31] by 70, but there was no money to implement it.

[19:35] So what do you do?

[19:37] Well, you kind of weighed a little bit.

[19:39] You started to try to figure out

[19:40] what your other options are.

[19:43] There were, you know, there have been some projects

[19:44] like the Twin Tunnels that Idaho Springs,

[19:46] the Eastbound War, now the Westbound War

[19:48] just got completed.

[19:49] So these individual projects,

[19:51] but there was no funding to do kind of the whole solution

[19:56] of fixing, if you will.

[19:57] And...

[20:00] Capacity issues on I-70. In 2013, see that convened what's called this traffic and revenue study, and that was really only looking at the segment from silver thorn to golden, because that's where the biggest traffic issues are. And, you know, trying to figure out, okay, well, what if we do this through private funding and look at tolling as an option? Is there a way that we can do tolling to be able to pay for these capacity improvements?

[20:29] And after the first round of analysis in that process, we found out that it couldn't pay for itself.

[20:37] So that study got aborted this summer and we're kind of back to where we were.

[20:41] We're still trying to figure out how are we going to pay for this.

[20:43] We still don't know the answer to those questions.

[20:45] But it's clear that a lot of the work that we want to do that we're interested in improving habitat connectivity for wildlife.

[20:52] we can't, if we, if we're serious about that, we can't just sit around and wait for something

[20:56] to happen with Cida, or a federal highway, because it could be a really, really long time.

[21:05] Cool, so let's talk about the I7E Ecological Study. There are three main components to the study.

[21:12] The first was this analysis of all the wildlife habitat, data, where there's movement corridors

[21:21] and animal vehicle collisions and to bring all this information together to identify

[21:27] where there's priority areas for wildlife movement over I-70.

[21:31] The second part of it was we did a really comprehensive inventory of all the existing bridges

[21:36] and culverts on I-70 under I-70.

[21:40] So for about 130 miles we went to every single one of those and just to get a sense of what's

[21:47] there right now and is there some potential functionality for wildlife and then we were able to look at that

[21:53] question a little more deeply by doing some strategic camera monitoring at some of these bridge

[21:58] and covert locations to see okay well these aren't necessarily built for wildlife passage

[22:04] but are some of these that that function for wildlife maybe they're using maybe they're not

[22:09] so we put up cameras at a lot of these locations pretty much all the photos that you see of animals on

[22:13] from our cameras. So there are places that, you know, that what I'm

[22:17] like for using these bridges and culverts, even in some unexpected places.

[22:22] So it's, it's need to be able to get us, you know,

[22:24] begin to get a sense of, you know, what is the actual permeability of the

[22:29] inner state for wildlife and where are there really just huge barriers

[22:33] that aren't being overcome? So the, the results of this study were these

[22:39] link between your parents and that I reference. So this kind of

[22:42] revised analysis of priorities.

[22:45] And I did want to point out that there

[22:48] that we looked at both terrestrial connectivity

[22:50] and aquatic connectivity issues.

[22:53] So a lot of the focus is on the terrestrial connectivity side,

[22:56] but we did also look at road stream crossings.

[23:00] And where there's either important areas for fish passage

[23:04] where we might want to look at improving road stream crossings

[23:07] that are more suitable for fish passage versus those areas

[23:11] where maybe we want to maintain the extreme barriers because we want to protect the pure

[23:16] population of native trout upstream. So that's another component of the study that

[23:22] not really going to talk much about, but it is part of the report. So that's available as well.

[23:27] And then in all of these priority areas, we identified preliminary recommendations for how to mitigate.

[23:33] Okay, where are the areas where we can potentially retrofit some of the existing infrastructure

[23:37] And where do we need to invest in new crossings in order to create a more permeable landscape?

[23:49] So this is your map at our gym.

[23:52] The one that is kind of hard to read, especially when you're looking at all of Eagle Counties.

[23:57] So what I'm going to ask you is to not really try to focus in too much on the detail,

[24:04] but just kind of get a sense of the colors and the patterns up there.

[24:07] What you're looking at are for the analysis for identifying these priorities zones.

[24:13] We split up the entire interstate into 10th of a mile segments.

[24:16] And that was the scale that we conducted our analysis.

[24:19] And we looked at all the different layers of information.

[24:24] So any of the target species habitat layers, wildlife movement, animal vehicle collisions.

[24:30] And so we were able to compile those and create sort of a wildlife values layer

[24:34] that is sort of the basis for identifying these important priority areas.

[24:40] And it's not to say that some areas have no value for wildlife,

[24:46] but there are some that are more valuable for multiple species of wildlife.

[24:51] And if we can invest in those areas, we probably can get the biggest bang for our buck.

[24:55] So that's really what we were trying to draw out through this analysis.

[25:00] And what you see here then is that some of these areas in red and the oranges and yellows kind of came out as the most high-priority areas, and the greens and the low and the light greens, those are lower priority.

[25:15] When you look at this kind of multi-species approach across the entire corridor from Golden all the way to London, can you? So, yes.

[25:25] Are they paradise because there's a variety or a great number of animals or a paradise

[25:30] because it's a really hard place to cross in there or a bunch of animals?

[25:38] We didn't really look at the question of, is it a hard place to cross?

[25:43] It was more like, is it does it have value as a crossing area?

[25:46] So it's not whether they necessarily could cross in that area.

[25:50] It's more of whether it has the different levels of value.

[25:54] So for a single species, there could be multiple data layers.

[25:57] We were looking at, and some of those data layers were more important than others.

[26:01] So for example,

[26:05] an identified links corridor was going to rank pretty high in our analysis versus something that was say, you know, I don't know, summer range for a species.

[26:16] So it just it kind of depended and it varied and we had a lot of expert review and input into the process so that it wasn't just two people sitting in the computer and saying hey, what do you think is important but you know that we tried to

[26:29] Really give a good relative index and then and then check ourselves and refine it accordingly. So there are some areas. There's one notable area that

[26:39] Right over here, so there's an a zone here that was identified as a priority that's

[26:45] an intern interchange and then over here is East Bale that was also identified as a

[26:49] priority area.

[26:50] And between there, there's a lot of red, and that's not an identified priority area.

[26:56] Because when we applied our decision rules, to actually say, okay, what constitutes a

[27:02] priority zone, some things did fall out and most notably is the area around Bale and it

[27:08] has to do because of the amount of development in that area.

[27:11] And when we're talking about constructing multi-million dollar structures for wildlife,

[27:17] are you going to put them in an area where there's hotels and a lot of human activity,

[27:20] are you going to try to put them in an area where the lands on either side

[27:23] have some more compatible use for wildlife movement, basically.

[27:29] So that area did fall out from the priority, even though it's,

[27:34] at some point it certainly had some value for wildlife movement.

[27:41] So, this map is a little easier to see because it's zoomed in from eagle to bell pass.

[27:48] And the yellow areas are those priority areas that we identified in our analysis.

[27:54] So, these are the link to interference zones.

[27:57] The purple areas beneath them are actually the areas that were identified by the experts that came together in the live committee in the 2004 analysis.

[28:07] So what we can see here is actually that the experts did a pretty good job of identifying

[28:13] some of these areas because there's a lot of overlap here.

[28:17] And the cream of the crop really comes out in both of these analyses.

[28:22] I think what our analysis did to a large part is kind of tighten it up and provide a more

[28:27] systematic way of looking at this, something that could lend a little bit,

[28:32] you know, just greater detail and confidence to it and refining these areas. But as again,

[28:38] there's a ton of overlap here. So it's kind of interesting to see that as well.

[28:45] Yeah.

[28:45] I'm just like, it looks like there's

[28:53] a smell.

[28:53] I'm sorry, it looks like there's a yellow.

[28:55] It's like a break of the word Edward, so it's a little

[29:00] box.

[29:02] That yellow dot is for the ton of Edwards. So this one is, oh yeah, that's the town. That's the

[29:08] I guess that's the town of min turn, but it's just not labeled.

[29:13] So actually, it's the actual box outlines areas that are the connectivity zones.

[29:19] And this next slide actually, kind of details for the entire county, what each of the

[29:25] eight connectivity zones are, and, you know, we have a bunch of maps and things for each

[29:30] of these.

[29:31] But in general, there are eight zones that were identified in Eagle County, and for each

[29:36] these because of all the inventory data that we've collected for all the existing structures.

[29:42] We are able to go and look and say, OK, well, are there some places where we could retrofit

[29:47] this existing bridge or culver and make it more functional for wildlife passage?

[29:52] And you can see here that a lot of these, most of them, have retrofit potential somewhere in

[29:58] that zone where there's...

[30:03] So, that's kind of cool because that's sort of more low hanging fruit. And in the report, C.

[30:08] They're terminology is early enhancements, opportunities. So that's an I for for retrofit, whatever.

[30:16] And then you also see we were able to look at, okay, well, where are their gaps?

[30:21] Where are their places that we need to, we're going to have to invest in a new dedicated wildlife crossing if we want to actually provide connectivity

[30:29] in the zone, and you can see that most pretty much all have some new structure requirements as

[30:36] well. And then a lot of times we would like to use guide-fensing and things to bring animals

[30:41] to a structure and kind of help them learn where it is. So that's kind of the summary results

[30:47] from this study.

[30:51] So I did want to mention this about target species. These are sort of combined

[30:57] across all the connectivity zones and equal counting some of the target species that we were

[31:03] looking at. So common primary target species include things like Canada,

[31:07] links, elk, and meal deer, not surprisingly. And some of the secondary target species that we

[31:14] looked at are mountain lion, moose, sporeal, toad, coyote, black bear, and then a number of

[31:21] medium and small fauna, things like boxes and badgers and weasels and things like that.

[31:26] So, not all of these are present in every one of these priorities zones, but this is just to give you an idea of some of the things we looked at at the studies.

[31:35] So, this is really important, not just for the purposes of identifying these priority areas, but when we get to home to the business of actually designing mitigation, that's kind of function for these wildlife, we have to think at a species specific, species specific perspective, because not everything works for every species.

[31:53] So, for example, there's some species that have really specific requirements when it comes

[31:59] to a crossing structure, and they won't use just anything.

[32:02] It has to be the right conditions if they're going to go and pass through that structure.

[32:07] Whereas other species, they'll cross through anything if they fit in it, they'll go.

[32:12] And so, understanding those differences among the different species is really important

[32:17] when you get to down to the site specific level of actually what does a mitigation in this area

[32:22] need to look like so that it's functional for these target species that are present here.

[32:28] So I think that's an important point.

[32:33] So I just, I wanted to run through a couple of examples

[32:36] of some of the priorities zones. We're not going to go through all of them, but we'll look at a

[32:42] couple of them just so that you can get a sense of them. And the background is one of the comfort.

[32:49] So the background that you're looking at here is actually looking at animal vehicle collision

[32:54] data to just to give you an idea of where there's actual collision hotspots.

[32:59] So this isn't the prioritization layer that includes kind of all the wildlife data.

[33:03] This is simply the collision data in the background.

[33:08] The zone we're looking at is this main one here.

[33:10] This is just west of the wool cut interchange.

[33:15] And it's primarily BLM lands in this area.

[33:18] And although there's some private, along the eastern side, and then as you can see there's this area here that where there's kind of a, there's been a lot of reported animal vehicle collisions.

[33:31] Here's some of the recommendations that we, we developed for this particular priorities zone and you'll see that so over here in this stretch.

[33:40] There wasn't really anything that was functional for wildlife, so we said, okay, well, this is an area where we need to think about installing a new crossing structure.

[33:51] But then in some of these other areas, there are a couple of existing bridges that are under the interstate.

[33:58] And with some improvements, these could be enhanced so that they're more functional for wildlife passage. So those are retrofit opportunities.

[34:05] and wouldn't take as much effort to make them functional for wildlife.

[34:09] And especially because there is a lot of wildlife

[34:12] fencing in this segment.

[34:14] So time making sure everything is tied into that fencing.

[34:16] This one pipe kind of drives me crazy because the wildlife fence

[34:20] actually goes in front of the pipe.

[34:22] So anything that comes in from over here and tries to exit

[34:24] will get bounce back onto the roadway

[34:27] because the fence is just in front of the culver.

[34:30] And we could just move that.

[34:32] And it wouldn't work for an elk,

[34:33] but it would work for a lot of smaller animals and so you know there's sometimes there's really simple things but you know the folks who put at the fence they were not thinking about that they were thinking well it's just a drainage pipe no big deal so

[34:45] you know in that context maybe it's not as important but for wildlife it um it could be made functional for passage

[34:52] so that's just one example

[34:56] let's move on

[34:58] this is

[35:00] So, this is at the mid-term interchange.

[35:04] This is also, there's a lot of forest service land in this area. Although, again, as you get closer to the veil over on the eastern end, there's a little bit more of a private land that orange-colored represents the ABCs. So, there are higher, sorry, that's animal vehicle collisions. In that segment, there are more collisions over towards the eastern end. And again, here's some of the recommendations that we devise.

[35:30] Again, there's several retrofit opportunities.

[35:36] And notably, there's this box culvert here.

[35:41] And that culvert, interestingly,

[35:44] was actually installed with some consideration for wildlife.

[35:49] And I would probably say it's a little,

[35:53] it's probably too small for what we really

[35:55] ideally like to have there, but we had cameras there for years.

[35:58] And we saw a number of animals, different kinds of animals.

[36:02] We saw deer, moose, or not, I'm sorry.

[36:05] We saw deer, we saw elk, we saw black bear, mountain lions,

[36:08] and smaller animals using that.

[36:11] So in terms of individual animals that have a bit

[36:15] situated to it and are willing to pass through it,

[36:16] it's working really well.

[36:18] If we wanted to pass larger groups of animals,

[36:21] we wouldn't recommend installing a larger bridge at that location.

[36:25] But it's a really great opportunity and certainly where I would focus my efforts in that particular zone to improve connectivity because it's a really nice connection.

[36:37] So, that's again, I'm not going to go into detail on all of these, but actually I will say one more thing.

[36:43] So, in a couple of these bridge structures, and this was true on the last zone as well, that you have these bridges, but there's just, there's no pathway for wildlife.

[36:53] There's no way for them to get through a lot of times

[36:55] what we see is rip wrap coming down on the slopes,

[36:58] all the way down to the river.

[37:00] And there's not really a way for an animal that has long skinny

[37:03] legs with hooves to get through that rip wrap.

[37:07] And so even though you have a bridge structure,

[37:09] it's not very functional for some of the wildlife

[37:12] that might otherwise be able to use it.

[37:14] So that's why we recommend retrofits

[37:15] at several of these location and that's something

[37:18] that we see in a lot of places where there's bridges.

[37:21] Yes.

[37:21] Julie, is there a lot of data out there that shows that just by adding this little thing,

[37:25] and it will actually do use it?

[37:28] Um, no, there's not a lot of data on that, there's some data on that and there's increasing

[37:34] amounts of data on that, but the whole idea of retrofitting structures is newer and it hasn't

[37:43] been done in a lot of places yet and so there's very little monitoring data accordingly.

[37:48] However, what we do know are just in general are some of the design features that work better

[37:56] for different types of wildlife.

[37:58] So by applying that knowledge base to these retrofit opportunities, we can kind of figure that out

[38:03] a little bit.

[38:04] But yeah, we're still learning a lot of this, for sure.

[38:06] Is it pretty promising though that things you have for that is surprisingly effective?

[38:10] Something like this, creating a pathway is really basic and yes, absolutely.

[38:15] I think that's kind of one of the very simple design elements that you would want to include in any sort of wildlife crossing structure and so yeah, that's that's a pretty

[38:27] A lot of animals are going to need something that has a dry, level pathway that with a natural substrate is sort of a preferred element. Yeah

[38:39] Julia, actually, I'm the mud springs on your past, was what it was specifically for deer migration.

[38:45] Yeah.

[38:45] And it was thick.

[38:46] That location was picked as that's where they went.

[38:49] Up that drainage.

[38:51] We did a four-year study before and after we were able to show that it worked.

[38:57] But we lost 40 percent of the deer.

[39:00] The fence scene was put into guide in there, but the deer would just stand at the fence scene.

[39:09] Exactly.

[39:09] And that's exactly it, that location is spot on.

[39:14] It's a really fabulous location, but it's the size of the structure

[39:18] that I think prevents anything other than small individuals or small groups

[39:22] from actually really using it.

[39:24] It was the first one down in California.

[39:26] Yeah, yeah. Excellent.

[39:27] It was the first one down in California, right?

[39:29] No.

[39:30] Yeah,

[39:35] there was, not just here in I-70,

[39:37] and a few other locations in Colorado.

[39:41] There was some work on this in the 70s,

[39:46] and that was kind of the beginning of this work

[39:47] in Colorado, and then it sort of went by the wayside for a while,

[39:51] and but it was neat to see that start-up kind of a while back,

[39:55] sort of a pioneer.

[39:58] Here's Westvale, Pa.

[40:02] This priority zone is surrounded by national forest lands. So that's a really good starting point because we already have some public lands on both sides of the interstate.

[40:15] And it's certainly been an important movement area for wildlife for a long time.

[40:19] Unfortunately, we do have a couple of documented links,

[40:22] road kills in this area.

[40:24] One that happened within this priority zone,

[40:27] itself, and one that just happened just beyond the north edge,

[40:30] what we identified as a priority zone.

[40:33] So with links, road kills, it's kind of special type of road

[40:36] kill, because there's not that many links in Colorado.

[40:39] And so every animal that dies on the road is pretty notable.

[40:44] And having two that dies on one area is especially

[40:47] I know to build.

[40:48] And, unfortunately, one of the leading known cause of death,

[40:53] I'm emphasizing known for links in Colorado, is Roke Hill.

[40:59] The only thing bigger is unknown.

[41:02] So, I mean, that's what we have to work with right now.

[41:06] And, so if we take a look at this, we actually have some really cool opportunity to say,

[41:10] there's a lot of really great stuff going on here because these bridges,

[41:14] is there's four of these span bridges right here.

[41:17] I have, it should have a multiple mile post, not just that one.

[41:21] That all are, any folder of an over them, you see them,

[41:24] that all these really high, long, open span bridges,

[41:28] and you have trees and vegetation and streams

[41:31] that go through underneath.

[41:32] So you have essentially an intact ecosystem beneath these bridges

[41:36] and for an animal passing through underneath,

[41:39] they're fairly well isolated from the impacts

[41:41] of the effects of traffic noise

[41:43] and things like that, so they can pass through those at areas pretty naturally and use them

[41:49] and they do, which is great.

[41:51] And so we already have in this whole segment of this particular priority area, very functional

[41:58] wildlife crossings, so that's great, you know, we don't have to do a lot.

[42:03] We could consider adding a little bit of guide fencing in some areas, just to encourage

[42:07] use, but they're already using them, so that's pretty cool.

[42:10] what we see over here is we go sort of a little bit further up the past, past my own post,

[42:17] 1.80, 5.5 is that the highway is not crossing any more of these big drainages anymore.

[42:23] So there's no more bridges and there's nowhere for wildlife to cross.

[42:27] There's no more infrastructure than like small drainage pipes.

[42:30] So this is an area where we think, okay, well, we have a lot of good things going on here.

[42:36] How can we improve it so that there's also a couple opportunities?

[42:39] because it's not just about funneling animals to one specific location,

[42:44] it's trying to provide us multiple opportunities for them to

[42:48] more restore actual connectivity at the landscape scale, not just

[42:52] one bottleneck, because not only every animal will find it that way.

[42:56] So this is an area where there is a recommendation for a new arch culvert,

[43:01] as well as a new wildlife overpass.

[43:05] And that wildlife overpass recommendation largely derives

[43:07] as a train consideration because it would be a lot more work to dig out a bridge here

[43:13] than to put an overpass over the road for wildlife.

[43:20] Yeah, I know that one of the issues on that

[43:32] sort of there is a short...

[43:38] Replace in a culvert also doing like sister and sister stuff to remove that.

[43:45] Yes and now I guess I mean a little bit I think probably could be better

[43:50] that in terms of being aware that certainly that there are a lot of sedimentation issues

[43:57] into Black Court Creek, I think we looked more because there was a lot of concern from

[44:02] the watershed council that the construction process of building it over past would increase

[44:09] sedimentation in the creek and they've done so much work to restore that system.

[44:13] And so that was certainly an issue that was looked at in terms of trying to improve some of those

[44:21] culverts.

[44:22] They're really just small direct, because black work creek is actually paralleling the

[44:26] inner state.

[44:26] And we want to put in structures that would go under, so perpendicular to the inner state.

[44:31] That makes sense.

[44:32] And so those drainage structures that go underneath are typically a femoral streams and just

[44:38] small drainage pipes that not really, I'm we're looking at larger fauna that we want to

[44:48] in this area. So things like elk and deer and links. And so in that case, anything that's

[44:56] kind of, you know, even if it was a slightly like a bottom, a very bottom culvert.

[45:00] There's something like that. It's still wouldn't function for those species. It'd have to be a larger structure in order to work for those target species.

[45:07] Did you have a question as well?

[45:09] No, I was just trying to...

[45:11] Okay. Awesome, thanks.

[45:14] Julia, the shading on those, that's animal.

[45:17] I'm sorry, wrong way. Oh, God, how does this...

[45:23] I'm just going to go back.

[45:26] And do you, and I know that it starts adding a lot of layers, but have you looked at

[45:38] overlaying ABCs with the priority level shading?

[45:46] So, to some pieces there is the same, but a lot of pieces are different.

[45:51] So, this is the animal vehicle collusion later that layer, those greens.

[45:55] So those are lower animal vehicle collision rates

[45:59] in this particular priority zone.

[46:02] And in terms of overlaying that collision data with the priority layers,

[46:10] that would be somewhat duplicitous because the animal vehicle

[46:14] collision layer was one of the analysis layers that we included in identifying

[46:18] those priority zones.

[46:21] But certainly, Cida and many others are interested in knowing where those

[46:27] collusion areas are. And from a funding standpoint, that's also important

[46:30] because it gives you access to safety funds for transportation.

[46:35] If you want to do some of these mitigations in areas where there's high

[46:38] collusion rates, which we often do, then you can access different

[46:42] pots of funding.

[46:47] Okay.

[46:49] Okay, so this is kind of what I was talking about

[46:51] with the bridges. I just wanted to give you an idea of this because

[46:56] is retrofitting can mean a lot of different things.

[46:59] And it really just depends on whatever's going on at that site.

[47:04] And what those conditions are and what's needed

[47:06] for whatever wildlife or present in that area.

[47:08] But as a situation that we see time and time again,

[47:12] on I-70, I'm pretty much anywhere in the US,

[47:15] are these bridges that have a lot of rip wrap on them.

[47:20] And from an engineering standpoint, rip wrap is great.

[47:23] It stabilizes slopes and when water comes through,

[47:25] it keeps the soil in place and prevents further erosion

[47:28] and things like that.

[47:31] From wildlife standpoint, it's less great

[47:32] because it's a barrier for some species,

[47:35] for a lot of species actually.

[47:37] So we're not saying, okay, completely get rid of rip-rop,

[47:40] but we are saying, okay, how can we create pathways

[47:42] through here?

[47:44] So that we don't undermine the slope stability

[47:46] but that we can create one of these dry,

[47:48] level pathways for wildlife.

[47:50] And here's a couple ways of how that can be done, and this example, none of these are from the same location, but just to give you an idea.

[47:58] In this area, you know, we're able to open up this whole area and put in this retaining wall, as a support, but actually be able to open up a really wide pathway.

[48:08] So that's one way of doing it. In other cases, you might not even have to do that.

[48:13] Here, they were just kind of able to clear away this one's from Utah.

[48:17] They were able to clear this pathway out and just kind of redesign it a little bit.

[48:23] So a pretty minor, relatively improvement to that structure to make it useful for wildlife.

[48:31] And there's that you can see there are a little bit hesitant, but the monitoring work that

[48:35] my colleague is doing there has shown that they are using this structure.

[48:38] So that's pretty cool.

[48:40] So this is one example where we have monitoring of a retrofit, but there's uh,

[48:48] And then I thought I'd give you just a couple of examples of some of the new structures and what those can look like on i70 because it's a big interstate and there's a lot of laying the traffic pretty much anything we do in terms of new structures is going to have to be big because as something you know structure gets longer for the longer distance animal has to travel under the interstate kind of the wider and the taller it needs to be as well for a lot of species and so

[49:16] This is actually on Highway 285 kind of in the conifer area.

[49:20] This was a design specifically for wildlife in the past couple of years and you can see

[49:25] these deer using it.

[49:26] I don't think any structure that small for the most part, we'd be looking at larger structures

[49:32] such as this one in under I think it's Interstate 5 in Utah and this one on I-Nandy in Washington

[49:39] state and these are really large arch culverts and they're actually two structures one under

[49:46] the each of the opposing lanes of traffic with an open median with natural habitat and that median.

[49:54] So that in that case when you have these really big structures that might be something in some areas

[49:58] where we would consider that.

[50:00] That is an option for I-70 bridges. Here's what, sorry, that's a dark, it looks nice on my computer.

[50:10] That's one of the open-span bridges on Westfell Pass pretty cool.

[50:14] Even though they all just wingering under there, and it's just spanning all the habitat and that's working really well.

[50:23] In other cases, you have these other, this is also on Bale Pass, and this is down near Durango and Florida River.

[50:30] where they're also using these kinds of smaller bridge structures

[50:33] that are wide enough open enough that they feel safe enough and that there's enough of an escape route

[50:40] that they'll enter into these structures.

[50:42] So bridges are really a great underpass solution to improving connections for wildlife.

[50:51] And then there's overpasses.

[50:53] So the overpasses actually really originated in Europe.

[50:57] And they built a number of these across many European countries.

[51:02] These two here are examples.

[51:04] I honestly forget where those two are, so I can't tell you.

[51:08] But they call them eco-ducks there for the most part.

[51:12] In North America, we have fewer, but we do have some.

[51:15] This one actually is a proposed overpass in Washington over I90.

[51:21] So it hasn't been built, but there's been a lot of research going on in that area.

[51:24] And there are hopefully they'll be able to build it

[51:27] at some time soon here.

[51:28] And this other one in upper left corner,

[51:30] that's a prong horn over past that was built in Wyoming.

[51:34] A couple of years ago, there are two of them

[51:35] that were built over Highway 191 as part

[51:38] of the prong horn migration, the path to the prong horn.

[51:41] If you've heard of that, so this is part of that.

[51:43] And after two seasons monitoring, it's been great

[51:46] because the prong horn are using them happily.

[51:48] And so that's really good news.

[51:51] And with very little hesitation, the first time

[51:53] encountered it that kind of hesitated. And now they're just crossing without hesitation. So that's

[51:58] very promising. There is a little bit of a learning curve. Yeah. When you see like a virtual.

[52:14] Yeah, that's a good question. When we construct a structure like this, you really want to make

[52:22] sure you're putting it pretty much in the right place in the first place. So that location should

[52:27] the coincide with where they want to go.

[52:30] So there shouldn't be too much of a, like, oh, wait, let's go way down here, a few miles and

[52:36] find this crossing structure.

[52:38] What we're aiming to do is put it where we're kind of where we know they're already going.

[52:41] But what we do see, obviously, within a little bit of room for error there, and what we

[52:47] do see is that there is a learning curve, for sure, with a lot of different animals that mothers

[52:52] will teach their young, that animal-like links will leave a cent track, and other links will

[52:57] follow in the future. So these kinds of things, you know, we don't, we want to get it more

[53:03] or less in the right spot, and it's going to depend on other things like terrain and some

[53:07] of the geotechnical stuff. So we have a little room for error, but we want to, you know,

[53:13] first get it in the right plot place. A good example of that actually is, I fear familiar with

[53:18] the overpasses in BAM. People look at those, and they're like, wow, you guys did this

[53:23] They're so many animals that are using them and there are and interestingly, those overpasses aren't in the exact location where the biologists were recommended.

[53:32] They got moved a little bit.

[53:35] There's fencing to guide animals to them and animals have learned to use them.

[53:40] And so that's, so, you know, within a certain amount of range, yes, you can, they will learn.

[53:45] And certainly, in BAMs, they've seen that with the black bears over 10 years,

[53:50] at first for a long time, the black bear use was really low, and now we've really seen that increase

[53:55] a lot, so there's been a huge learning curve there.

[54:03] So the other thing that we were able to provide

[54:05] for the I-70 project was sort of a set of best practice guidance. So these are things that are

[54:13] applicable anywhere you want to create more wildlife friendly transportation infrastructure.

[54:19] So, not just in those priorities zones that we highlighted, but anywhere, so anytime there's a project,

[54:27] you can refer to these kinds of best practices and do a better job, essentially,

[54:32] making it more wildlife friendly.

[54:33] And then, of course, I always have to kind of take the horn of long-term monitoring,

[54:37] because that's really important.

[54:38] This is how we learn about what works and what doesn't work,

[54:41] and so that we can apply that knowledge to future projects.

[54:43] I can't really emphasize that because not enough money and effort is put into monitoring and it's really really valuable.

[54:53] So I include that as one of the best practices.

[54:58] So we're at two o'clock.

[55:00] I have a few more slides here. I can zip through them or I can kind of talk about them a little bit more.

[55:07] I was going to just mention the Highway 9 because I think that's an interesting project.

[55:11] But I don't know. Let you guys tell me what you like at this point.

[55:15] Do you want to keep going? I'm happy to keep going.

[55:18] So, okay. Great.

[55:21] All right. So, Highway 9, probably a lot of you have heard about this project and this is what Jim was referencing

[55:29] earlier. This is a project in just north of Silverthorne between Green Mountain Reservoir and Crumling.

[55:39] And in 2015, they'll start construction on 11 miles of highway. It's a safety improvement

[55:45] project. At all those dots there are collisions with wildlife. All those red dots. There's been

[55:53] of human fake cell tall days on that roadway as well.

[55:57] And I think we have a lot we can learn from this project.

[56:01] And that's kind of why I inserted this slide in here,

[56:03] because not only is it really cool and exciting,

[56:05] but it's an opportunity for us to capitalize on this

[56:09] and hopefully do projects like this in places like Eagle County

[56:12] and other counties in Colorado.

[56:15] So there's these seven crossings to overpasses

[56:18] and five underpasses that are going to be connected by fencing.

[56:21] And I think it would, you know, it would be easy to dismiss this and say,

[56:26] Oh, well, you know, they have this conservation ranch there,

[56:31] and there's a billionaire, and he gave all this money.

[56:34] And that's why they have this project.

[56:36] We can't do that anywhere else.

[56:38] That's just, you know, we don't have billionaires conveniently

[56:40] stashed in our pocket that every segment of roadway

[56:43] where we want to do this kind of work, right?

[56:45] Yeah, we do.

[56:46] Okay, you might in Eagle County.

[56:49] But, you know, I mean, and it's great where we do, you know, we want to capitalize on that,

[56:54] but even where we don't, it's not just about that one source, I mean, there's no doubt that Mr. Jones

[57:00] had a huge role in getting this project off the ground, but it was really the community that initiated

[57:07] this project years ago. They've been talking about doing this for over 10 years, like 15 years,

[57:12] maybe I don't know more. And so it was their inspiration and the ranch got involved in that

[57:20] which is awesome. And but it was also their involvement that got this project over the finish line.

[57:27] So the million dollars that Mr. Jones donated in the first place really got the whole ball rolling.

[57:34] But the community, when it came down to it, they were able to raise a million dollars in three months,

[57:42] which I think is really impressive, and that instigated the county to donate more funding for the project.

[57:48] And at that point, you see that can't turn around and say, oh, we're not going to fund that project.

[57:53] No way, there's so much support for this project.

[57:56] So, Cida, you know, they said, okay, you came up with a 20% matching funds.

[58:02] All right, you know, and there were certainly pieces that wasn't all as simple as that,

[58:06] but there were pieces that came together, there were some protrudes as timing and things like that,

[58:10] but I just want to say the role of the community and the community involvement in making this project happen

[58:18] is a huge lesson for all of us, because I think that as we move forward, that's going to be more and more important.

[58:24] these projects aren't going to happen with CDOT just alone or federal highways.

[58:29] It's going to have to come from the people who live in these places and who are really

[58:34] you know, insisting on this kind of thing and participating in it as well.

[58:39] So, it is a really exciting project.

[58:41] And I think it is something a lot of people want to be involved in too.

[58:45] And that CDOT actually kept the design for this project in turn rather than contracting it out

[58:49] because they wanted to be involved in it.

[58:50] So I think that's really excellent that people are excited about it, and we're going to learn

[58:56] a lot about it too because we're going to do some good monitoring work, so that'll be fun.

[59:06] I guess at this point, I just wanted to say that I'm clearly, a lot of this has to do more

[59:15] with things like collaboration than it does with the science of road ecology when it comes down

[59:20] to getting this work done.

[59:22] It's not going to be about, do we know what to do and where?

[59:28] We pretty much know what we need to do,

[59:29] and we know more or less where we need to do it.

[59:31] We can figure that piece out what it really comes down to

[59:35] is how are we going to work together to get this done?

[59:38] And that's going to require a lot of different pieces

[59:42] because when we talk about the landscape scale,

[59:44] it's kind of our big picture.

[59:46] So we talk about connectivity at this landscape scale,

[59:48] sort of nebulus, but what really is are all those little pieces, because we work at a local

[59:54] scale. And all those projects that we do, whether you're a land-trip.

[1:00:00] August or county or a, you know, a landowner with a conservation easement or anything, even a developer, you know, all those pieces how they fit together to form this big picture because ultimately, you know, we're going to have to figure out, okay, how do we work together? How do we collaborate across jurisdictional boundaries? Because wildlife don't stop those boundaries, not necessarily. So we're going to need to work across those boundaries. If we want to create a landscape that is functional for wildlife to traverse across that.

[1:00:30] I think it is probably all of you have experience, that kind of, in a organizational collaboration,

[1:00:38] working on that early in the process, getting that ball rolling, having those conversations,

[1:00:42] getting all the issues out on the table from the outset, that is really going to pay off in the long run

[1:00:48] and you're going to have fewer surprises in the long run.

[1:00:51] And you're going to be able to work through these issues and probably find new opportunities and things like that.

[1:00:55] So that collaboration piece is absolutely essential

[1:01:00] if we want to talk about conserving landscape connectivity.

[1:01:04] And I think these last slides is kind of, you know,

[1:01:10] I'm wrapping up.

[1:01:11] And just to sort of keep this dialogue going

[1:01:17] and kind of get people thinking about,

[1:01:19] okay, what is this going to look like for us?

[1:01:21] So, you know, kind of thinking about,

[1:01:22] okay, we talk about this thing called the big picture.

[1:01:25] And what would that actually look like?

[1:01:27] How do these different pieces of human development

[1:01:30] and recreation is certainly a big thing around here?

[1:01:34] That's why we live here, it's why I love Colorado.

[1:01:38] And other board traditional land uses like ranching and farming

[1:01:40] and things like that, how can we bring these pieces together

[1:01:43] to have more of a landscape vision

[1:01:45] so that all of our individual projects actually

[1:01:47] feed towards a common vision?

[1:01:50] And there's a couple things, well, I guess.

[1:01:55] Man, too fast.

[1:02:00] It's just thinking about, okay, what are these different elements and what will it take to get there?

[1:02:06] What will it take to create a landscape where the landscape is connected and while life can move more freely across that landscape?

[1:02:15] Where there's community awareness and engagement in these issues and an understanding of why this is important and how it relates to our quality of lives.

[1:02:23] And how we can have more compatible land uses

[1:02:27] across jurisdictional and ownership boundaries.

[1:02:30] And what is it going to take us to get there?

[1:02:33] So this last slide is really,

[1:02:35] this is a link using our knowledge.

[1:02:38] A Bob Kack, you're doing a small culvert under I-70,

[1:02:41] which was kind of fun.

[1:02:42] We saw a lot of Bob Kack activity at this place.

[1:02:46] And just to get us thinking about,

[1:02:48] OK, well, what can we do?

[1:02:49] So here's a couple of ideas and things

[1:02:52] that I've talked about with people about, okay, what will this take?

[1:02:56] What does it, what does it look like to create a connected landscape?

[1:02:59] And I think, you know, certainly this first one is something that you guys have already been

[1:03:03] talking about here in Eagle County, integrating wildlife connectivity and large landscape considerations

[1:03:08] into county planning and permitting, that's certainly one element also working with public

[1:03:13] lands and public lands management, a couple other things all throughout their, this is something

[1:03:22] that will applaud a county down so the Durango area that they created a volunteer board living

[1:03:30] with wildlife advisory board and it was really a board that convened to advise the county commissioners

[1:03:37] and to on issues that were around wildlife in the county. So not strictly roads and wildlife also

[1:03:44] just home ownership and wildlife country and those kinds of things. And so to provide that information

[1:03:50] and resources to the county but also to the public and to provide public education and awareness

[1:03:55] resources. So I think that kind of advisory board is a really neat idea. One thing that I really

[1:04:03] would like to see is sort of an inner agency or even broader than just agencies, bringing

[1:04:08] the universities and researchers to have a science advisory group basically, a wildlife

[1:04:14] crossings work from group. This is something I've seen a little bit in Canada, but I think this

[1:04:19] be more effective at a state level, you know, but as a resource, then that a county could come

[1:04:24] to and draw on and say, hey, we're working on these projects, can you advise us on these

[1:04:29] project with the best, most up-to-date science, because not every county is going to have that

[1:04:33] at their fingertips, you know, that CDIC could come to you, that the Forest Service could come

[1:04:37] to, that a private developer could use these resources and get advice when they want to integrate

[1:04:43] more wildlife friendly designs into projects. So that's kind of a big picture idea for the state

[1:04:48] but maybe someday we'll get there.

[1:04:52] And inevitably a lot of the stuff

[1:04:54] come down to funding and you've heard me say already

[1:04:57] that I think it is gonna require a lot.

[1:05:01] Local support and local fundraising, and tap into those billionaires and everybody else, because it's not going to just come from see dot anymore.

[1:05:11] It's not going to come from federal highways. You know, we can get matching funds, but we're going to be more position better position for those matching funds.

[1:05:18] If we were already generated a lot of local support and funding to go along with that. So, you know, thinking about what how that can happen and where that is,

[1:05:27] is going to be really useful.

[1:05:30] And again, I mean, all the information that's in that report

[1:05:33] I'm happy to work with you guys further on providing that kind

[1:05:37] of information and helping you sift through what you think priorities

[1:05:40] might be for Eagle County and where you might want to put your

[1:05:43] efforts initially and things like that.

[1:05:45] So that's something that I'll offer to you.

[1:05:49] And then anything else you guys have.

[1:05:52] So that's the end of that.

[1:05:55] That's one of my favorite pictures from.

[1:05:58] from the monitoring. So thanks, you guys, and I definitely want to open it up.

[1:06:08] Julia,

[1:06:09] have a question of the animal vehicle collision data come from

[1:06:21] about the forward actor.

[1:06:23] Yeah, that's a great question. So when we were working on the I-70 ecological project,

[1:06:33] there are some segments of the fencing had been in place for a while,

[1:06:36] And then there were some segments that were getting constructed right as we were completing the project.

[1:06:43] And so, that's something that we've considered.

[1:06:47] Our data is not really good enough to be able to answer that question.

[1:06:53] And certainly with the newest segment of Fencing.

[1:06:55] You know, we're probably getting to a point where we could go back and look at those data from before and after and see what changes there are.

[1:07:02] I haven't done that.

[1:07:03] So I think it would be interesting though.

[1:07:07] Unfortunately, the thing with animal vehicle collision data

[1:07:10] is that it comes from primarily from accident reports.

[1:07:15] So state patrol.

[1:07:16] So somebody doesn't report an accident.

[1:07:18] It doesn't want to make an insurance claim.

[1:07:19] It doesn't want to deal with that.

[1:07:22] Then it doesn't get reported.

[1:07:23] And there's, you know, it's

[1:07:25] putting on who you ask.

[1:07:26] Those estimates are best that it's 50% of the actual collision

[1:07:30] rates, and maybe only, maybe a lot less than that, and in addition, that's only, I mean,

[1:07:40] there's all the collisions where animals might even just wander off into the woods or things

[1:07:44] like that, and they might not die on the roadway.

[1:07:45] So see that has to do some voluntary across it with their maintenance staff, voluntary data

[1:07:51] collection, but it's not consistent from one seed out region to the next.

[1:07:57] So we can't really use it very easily unless you're working only on a very, very specific project.

[1:08:02] You can't do anything in a broader region with it.

[1:08:05] So the fact that we don't have good data is one of the issues that we're dealing with.

[1:08:09] And every state is dealing with.

[1:08:11] So it's something we're working on.

[1:08:14] You expect to find that you have you ever considered partnerships with environmental organizations.

[1:08:18] but the state should be servicing it for a while,

[1:08:20] I can think of it like that to generate those

[1:08:24] mentioned dollars that are needed to get

[1:08:26] so you got to be interested.

[1:08:28] Yeah, and I worked for one of those for a good while.

[1:08:32] And we definitely, we definitely tried to do that.

[1:08:37] And so the organization that I used to work for is now

[1:08:41] part of a different, you know,

[1:08:42] they're merged into another organization,

[1:08:44] but that's called Rocky Mountain Wild.

[1:08:45] And Rocky Mountain Wild is still continuing

[1:08:48] to try to do this work. They are still trying to raise funds to do some of this work. It's

[1:08:53] been pretty slow for sure. But there are some examples where it has been effective. I think

[1:09:00] the problem crossing and Wyoming, the environmental group's definitely had a role in that,

[1:09:05] a lot of live conservation society among them. I think maybe the Nature Conservancy, I don't remember.

[1:09:09] And those organizations, along with the university research institutes, and ultimately a lot of that funding actually came from the oil and gas industry.

[1:09:22] Because that's right in an area that is where that habitat for the prawn horn migration is getting pregnant in by oil and gas.

[1:09:30] So definitely, I think all avenues should be explored for funding.

[1:09:35] Does anybody else have anything or any ideas?

[1:09:39] I have a question, sorry, let's ask it.

[1:09:43] But is there any evidence that traffic structures over a highman that has more than 10,000 vehicles

[1:09:51] at its brief established migration route?

[1:09:55] In the problem horn, that's at pretty low.

[1:09:58] Yeah.

[1:09:58] I'll never think of it. I said me.

[1:10:01] Migration routes. And if we put in a overpass, do we have any data that suggests that that could get

[1:10:08] actually raised down motion?

[1:10:09] That a migration route. Again, it depends on the location. I mean, some, I think, you know, we don't

[1:10:16] have anything as iconic as the path of the pronghorn to that we're going to re-establish here.

[1:10:24] However, there are certainly smaller migrations that, yes, absolutely, I think we can.

[1:10:30] And I think the structure that Bill was mentioning it

[1:10:33] doubts junction.

[1:10:34] Again, that structure was there was recognition

[1:10:37] that there was a milder migration through here.

[1:10:41] And I need to move between winter and summer range.

[1:10:44] And that was the purpose was to restore that connection.

[1:10:50] And again, when you're talking about,

[1:10:54] when you're designing a crossing structure,

[1:10:56] and you're looking at individual animals

[1:10:58] and individual movements,

[1:10:59] It is different than when you're talking about huge migrations and you have to think bigger

[1:11:05] because there's more animals.

[1:11:08] And so that's something that we'll have to think about in these areas, even where there's a smaller migration,

[1:11:14] you know, relative to some of these massive migrations.

[1:11:16] In the northwest part of the state, you know, where we have some of the biggest elk and deer herds in the country,

[1:11:23] That must again, so Highway 13 is one of those areas between Craig and Rifle.

[1:11:29] That area, you know, to restore those connections, it's going to be challenging just because

[1:11:35] there's a lot of animals that you're dealing with.

[1:11:37] So I think there is potential, especially with some of the smaller migration movements.

[1:11:42] Yeah, and I think we can do that over I-7, even though it's a big highway.

[1:11:46] Absolutely. There's a lot of, I think, I think what's going to get hard is if we increase

[1:11:54] a lot of lanes. Right now with four lanes and maybe a median, there's a lot of evidence

[1:12:00] that we can create crossing structures that are functional. But if we increase one of the plans

[1:12:05] that was being discussed in the traffic and revenue study was for like four additional manage lanes

[1:12:14] telling links, so adding that to the four existing links,

[1:12:18] that's eight lanes of traffic, that's LA style.

[1:12:21] I don't know, I don't know if we can do anything

[1:12:23] over a lanes of traffic with no median.

[1:12:26] That would be tough.

[1:12:28] But I mean, I think we should try some of these things,

[1:12:30] but it would be tough,

[1:12:35] yeah.

[1:12:36] Well, if that's it, thanks, you guys.

[1:12:38] And it really, it is really my hope

[1:12:40] that this generates more discussion and dialogue.

[1:12:44] I see this as a starting point for this.

[1:12:46] And like I said, I mean, there's a lot more

[1:12:48] information and data that we have and we're happy to share that and you know

[1:12:51] happy to continue the dialogue.

[1:12:53] So thanks.

[1:12:54] Thank you very much.

I-70 Wildlife Migration Presentation

Agenda

Transcript