Road Ecology Center

The Sterling Highway is a paved two-lane road which links Alaska’s western Kenai Peninsula, to the Seward Highway and Anchorage, the state’s largest city. The Kenai National Wildlife Refuge is bisected by the Sterling Highway, which has one of the highest moose (Alces alces) vehicle collision rates for a rural highway in the state. The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities is planning to reconstruct a section of the Sterling Highway between MPs 58 and 79, occurring mostly within the Refuge. A working group was formed in 2005 to collect data on moose movements and review wildlife-vehicle collisions (WVC). The group consists of representatives from the Federal Highway Administration; the Alaska Departments of Transportation and Public Facilities, Fish and Game, and Public Safety; the Alaska Moose Federation (non-profit); and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The purpose of this cooperative effort is to reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions along the Sterling Highway corridor through the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge while maintaining permeability and enhancing habitat connectivity. In this paper, we describe our study design and provide interim results from 2005-06.