Road Ecology Center

Determining locations where wildlife movement and highway operation conflict is an essential first step in making highways safer for motorists and animals. Using an expert-opinion approach, we identified 86 conflict areas (hot spots) for wildlife along state-maintained roads in the Oregon Department of Transportation’s Region 1. Of the 757 miles of highway analyzed, 22% were identified as wildlife hot spots by expert teams, suggesting that the scope of this problem is substantial. Most of these hot spots were locations with frequent deer-vehicle collisions, although some were crossing locations for deer and elk that did not have frequent animal-vehicle collisions. Some hot spots were identified for non-focal species, including northwestern pond turtle, western painted turtle, coyote, bobcat, black bear, and beaver. Hot spots generally were associated with topographic features that directed animals towards highways, the presence of habitat adjacent to highways, or food resources that attracted animals. Six hot spots were considered high priority. The expert-opinion approach employed for this analysis was effective in rapidly assessing many miles of state-maintained highway for the presence of wildlife hot spots and may prove useful in addressing conflicts between wildlife and highways in other locales or on a statewide basis. Not all of the hot spots warrant mitigation, although we suggest that the areas identified in this analysis be examined more carefully during development of projects that may affect wildlife passage.