All the necessary ingredients were there to create the perfect — more specifically, perfectly horrifying — vehicle crash.
It was a dark winter night and the two elk were crossing NM 68 south of Taos, probably in search of food. That’s when Garrett VeneKlasen spotted the animals while driving his aging Lexus.
VeneKlasen had just enough time to veer out of line with the mother moose, but his vehicle clipped a calf weighing about 250 pounds. The collision killed the smaller moose and caused “significant” damage to the vehicle.
The driver of a truck driving behind VeneKlasen did not have enough time to avoid the dead moose and ran over his body, almost causing another accident.
Neither driver was injured, but VeneKlasen recalled a “rather scary” incident that made his heart race.
“Had I been another 12 inches above that, that moose would have gotten over my hood and into my windshield and probably killed me,” said VeneKlasen, the northern director of conservation for the New Mexico Wildlife Federation.
Such potentially deadly situations become increasingly problematic as wild animals continue to migrate to find food, water, a mate, or to escape a once-comfortable habitat devastated by wildfire. Officials say vehicle accidents involving animals — encounters that can result in destruction, death and thousands of dollars in damage — are prompting renewed efforts to create safety corridors for people and animals.
Legislators, public safety advocates and wildlife are putting a lot of faith – and wanting to invest a lot of money – into implementing the state’s Wildlife Corridors Act, which was passed and signed into law in 2019 but still needs hundreds of millions of dollars to come to fruition.
The numbers are sobering: According to a June 2022 action plan prepared by the state Department of Transportation and the Department of Game and Fish, there were 15,486 reported incidents on New Mexico roads between 2002 and 2018 involving six major species were, including deer, elk and black bears. Deer made up for over 11,000 of those incidents.
Sometimes the victims aren’t just the animals. In late August, an official with the state Department of Transportation told the Legislature’s Interim Committee on Transportation, Public Works and Capital Improvements that there had been at least three fatalities in such accidents in New Mexico, most recently in 2020.
According to U.S. Department of Transportation statistics, more than 200 people died in animal-related vehicle accidents in the country in 2020, with the vast majority occurring between June and September.
The financial cost of such accidents: $8 million, including the cost of repairing property damage, according to the federal report.
Advocates say mere signs along the highway warning motorists of wildlife crossings and the presence of other animals may not be enough to stem the tide of accidents.
The Wildlife Corridors Act requires state agencies to analyze various data points — including wildlife accidents — to prioritize areas where wildlife passages, including flyovers, underpasses and wildlife fences, should be built to protect people and wildlife.
The latest state report states that the top five wildlife vehicle accident hotspots are Glorieta Pass near Santa Fe, as well as the city of Cuba in Sandoval County and the communities of Bent, Ruidoso and Silver City in southern New Mexico.
It also prioritizes six wildlife corridors recommended for development projects, including in the Chama area, an area south of Raton, and in roads in the Sandia and Jemez mountain ranges.
Meeting the corridor needs in these top five crash areas will be costly – about $165 million according to current estimates.
Those projects “don’t come cheap,” confirmed Bryan Bird, southwestern program director for Defenders of Wildlife, a nonprofit organization working to protect native plants and animals in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.
Although the Legislature has already allocated $2 million to fund state agencies’ efforts to produce an action plan and report, that money will not go much further, he said.
But Bird added that a bipartisan infrastructure package passed by Congress includes $350 million to build wildlife crossings, and New Mexico can apply for grant funding to advance corridor projects.
Sen. Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque, who co-sponsored the Wildlife Corridors Act, said last week she hopes to secure a one-time $50 million grant in the 2023 legislative session to start work on some of the priority to begin projects and to apply for the appropriate federal funds.
“We need to get our grantees together and figure out how to access those funds,” Stewart said. “It’s important that we try to protect our wildlife diversity and do things smarter; try adding some of those overpasses and underpasses and fences.”
Will such efforts pay off? Nevada has reported success with an animal shelter and transfer program first initiated in 2010. Nova Simpson, a biological director for the Nevada Department of Transportation’s environmental division, said the state has recorded about 8,000 mule deer annually using these corridors to safely cross roads.
“That’s 8,000 animals not on the road and in front of motorists,” she said.
She said deer fences, which can range in height from just a few feet for desert tortoises to eight feet for deer, elk and bighorn sheep, help drive these animals onto safer trails.
“Most animals can adapt to either underpasses or overpasses,” she said.
She said another benefit of the animal corridors is their ability to reduce the mortality rate of endangered species or those whose populations are already endangered, such as the desert tortoise.
Other states, mostly to the west, have created similar wildlife corridors, including Arizona and Colorado. In California, millions are being raised to build an intersection for US 101 on the west side of Los Angeles County that will allow mountain lions to easily cross eight lanes of traffic, expanding their habitat.
New Mexico has already begun building two wildlife corridors near Cuba and Raton.
These expansions are necessary, wildlife advocates say, to sustain these populations and give the animals a chance to adapt to development. Climate change, drought and wildfires are also driving migration patterns.
“We are seeing more and more of these accidents because theirs [animal] Habitats have been degraded and development is shifting to areas they normally use,” said Vene Klassen. “It’s a big public safety issue, but you can’t value wildlife. It’s important economically, important for consumption – we eat moose. It’s an important food source for families.”
Vane Klassen believes New Mexico is on the right track with the Wildlife Corridors Act, but said it needs to move faster and invest more money in infrastructure to make such safe passages viable.
“Fifty million is a good start,” he said. “But we have to set aside $100 million for it tomorrow. There’s investment money, federal money, all kinds of other money that can be used for this. I want this to be on the radar of [congressional] Senators, MPs and all state legislatures. We need to boost that.
“The clock is ticking and lives are at stake – obviously human lives, but also very valuable wildlife.”
