Take Action for Our Wildlife

Oregon is fortunate to have abundant wildlife and wonderful natural places that provide habitat to animals like mule deer, elk, pronghorn antelope, and other creatures. Many of these species move across their habitat each year as part of their lifecycle and need open corridors to survive.

Unfortunately, when roads crisscross these habitat corridors and other types of development create barriers to wildlife movement, Oregon’s iconic wild animals suffer. Furthermore, these conflicts can be dangerous to people too. Over 30,000 wildlife-vehicle collisions were recorded throughout the state between 2017 and 2021, with 4,874 collisions reported in 2022 alone. The actual number is likely at least three times as high because many collisions go unreported.

Hundreds of injuries to drivers and two human fatalities each year occur as a result of these collisions. Not only is hitting wildlife dangerous for people and animals, it is costly. The average cost of a vehicle collision with a mule deer—the most common collision type—costs $16,967 and collisions with elk cost $56,782.

Fortunately, we have the solutions to ensure wildlife can safely get across roads. By building or retrofitting existing bridges and culverts we can reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions by more than 80 percent. In Central Oregon on U.S. Highway 97 where ODOT has built a wildlife underpass at Lava Butte, wildlife-vehicle collisions have been reduced by 86 percent!

Wildlife crossings are a wise investment, with structures paying for themselves over a relatively short time horizon by yielding annual benefits of $250,000 to $443,000 per structure. Thankfully, the Oregon legislature started to invest in wildlife crossings during the 2022 session, which enabled the completion of a crossing project at Gilchrist in Central Oregon. But there are more wildlife-vehicle hot spots across the state, such as along I-5 south of Ashland, and on U.S. Highway 20 between Juntura and Harper, as well as near Sisters. The Oregon legislature once again has the opportunity to invest in measures to mitigate wildlife-vehicle collisions by passing House Bill 2999, which would bring a much needed $5 million to critical wildlife mobility and habitat connectivity projects across the state.

The bipartisan bill was recently passed out of the House Committee on Agriculture, Land Use, Natural Resources, and Water and referred to the Ways and Means Committee. Please contact your representatives today to ask them to support the passage of HB 2999 to make Oregon’s roads safer for wildlife and people!