A moose leads her calves across an Alaskan road. Photo by Mike Criss.

Create Safe Pathways for Wildlife

On U.S. highways, a vehicle hits an animal at least every 26 seconds. The National Wildlife Federation is working to create corridors for wildlife to cross key habitat areas safely, which will help save wildlife and protect drivers. Learn more and find out how you can help >>
 

This Photo of the Day was donated by a participant in the annual National Wildlife Photo Contest. See more photos or sign up for the 42nd Annual National Wildlife Photo Contest.

This blog is the story of George Gay, who works for the National Wildlife Federation in our Northeast Natural Resource Center in Vermont. He is the Senior Manager, Wildlife Conservation Programs.

A Father’s Legacy

My dad grew up as a single child in Baltimore in the 1930s. He spent his free time outdoors. He taught himself woodcraft, taxidermy, and how to make firearms. He made beautiful Kentucky rifles. He pushed me to believe, and it may seem old-fashioned, I should know my way around the woods, an axe and a dog. He also understood the web of life, and we talked often about the complexities of nature. He loved Aldo Leopold and John Muir. I remember him reading me books as a little kid, such as the biography of Francis Parkman, the man who explored the American West, and James Fenimore Cooper – the author of the Leatherstocking Tales.

Growing Up in Northern Virginia

My dad spent a lot of time with me when I was growing up in Northern Virginia just outside of Washington, DC. We went goose hunting on the eastern shore of Maryland and pheasant hunting in southwestern Virginia. He taught me how to trap muskrats. He drove me to school in McLean, Virginia. I remember stopping our car by a bridge off of Georgetown Pike or along the Potomac River. I would go down and my check traps. This was our routine every day that I had a trap line. No exceptions. This was a beautiful time in my life.

Later, in middle school, I “ran” my trap line by bicycle. I got up before the sun rose, put my pack basket on my back, rode to a nearby creek or pond, and walked into the woods with a flashlight or by moonlight. Normally, muskrats died instantaneously in body gripping Conibear traps. However, if I came upon an animal in one of my traps that was alive, I would dispatch myself. This was hard. But, I learned how to skin and flesh a furbearer. And, I learned what it meant to be a part of the web of life. I was exposed to the out-of-doors in a pretty intense way. I thought deeply about wildlife and wildlife habitat in an urban landscape.

Exploring the Maine Wilderness

When I was 14, my parents sent me to a camp affiliated with the Quaker religion in northern Maine. We canoed and camped, from river to river, lake to lake, all summer. There was one plane drop of food. Our group was small and isolated. Eleven kids and three counselors in the wilds. We were not in aluminum or fiberglass canoes, but canoes made from cedar and canvas. We learned how to patch them when we hit a rock. We came to love our boats and take care good of them. You have probably been in an automobile on a secluded road and thought “I really hope I don’t break down here.” We thought the same on the waters of the Allagash and St. Croix rivers. So, we worked hard to make sure our canoes were well cared for and would not break down.

After two months I remember coming out of the camp and meeting my dad in Augusta, Maine at the airport. He gave me an envelope and I thought “Oh great, some cash to use when I get home”. Instead, it was a year-long membership to the Wilderness Society. As a member, I received a copy of Wilderness every month. I read that magazine from cover to cover and learned what wilderness was. I decided then that I wanted to be a conservationist. In college at Virginia Tech I studied the things I loved – wildlife management and forestry.

Becoming a Naturalist and then a Lawyer

After college, I worked as a naturalist for the National Park Service in California. My duty station was Kings Canyon National Park, home of the Giant Sequoia, Sequoia sempervirens. I led evening programs and supervised hikes. I loved it.

I remember a speech by Ronald Reagan who was the governor of California at the time. He was commenting on a growing interest in the establishment of the Redwoods National Park. Governor Reagan said, “I don’t know why we need a national park. You’ve seen one redwood, you’ve seen them all.” I realized that if I really want to protect the out-of-doors, I better be involved in conservation policy. Science and education is one thing, but policy is where the rubber hits the road. So I went to law school and got an environmental law degree.

Falling in Love with the Appalachians and New England

I went to Vermont Law School. Right away, I was drawn to the maturity of the Appalachians – the oldest mountains of the world. They are roughed over. You don’t get the eye candy of the Sierra Nevadas. The Appalachians seem more enduring. They are like a warm glow in the fireplace rather than a house fire out of control.

It’s something about the accessibility of the Appalachians that I love. This is a place where we all live. From frugal New Englanders to the Scotch-Irish of the Carolinas, we are part of the Appalachian forests. Few people are truly living in western landscapes above 14,000 feet in the Sierras or Rockies. There, you go to visit. Here, in the Appalachians, human cultures are a real part of the landscape. I really like that.

My home town, Stowe, Vermont, is special. I wake up every morning and I go to my mailbox. I look over a river valley to the unbroken landscape of the Worcester mountains. The Worcesters are really close and I can look up in those mountains and imagine all kinds of wild stuff going on – bobcats, bears, martin, and fisher.  I often wonder – am I  looking at a mother and her young frolicking on the hill side right now? There is this mystery and wonder in the place. But it’s my place.

Fatherhood

I have three boys. I realized as a young parent that the outdoors is a great place to interact with a child. When my kids were 6, 8 and 10, we would be driving to a sporting event, perhaps an hour away. We would have really meaningful conversations. My eyes were on the road. There wasn’t a lot of eye contact. I wasn’t preaching to them across a table.

When you are having this outdoor experience, it’s the same thing. It’s a great canvas on which to paint the lessons of life. You don’t have to sit there and talk about the tree or a duck. You can talk about why it’s important to do well in school, or why you must reach out to the kid that other people are picking on. These life lessons are more easily taught when you are doing something together in the  outdoors. It’s a great place to be a parent. It’s better than the kitchen table or the couch in front of the TV set. It worked when Grandfather did it for my dad, and when my dad it for me and my four siblings – so I wanted to do that with my three sons.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I wanted them to be connected to nature. That was one of my commitments as a dad. I wasn’t going to push them to love it, but I wanted them to have familiarity with it to decide if it was for them.

There is a place near my house called Cotton Brook. It’s one of my favorite places. It is part of the Mount Mansfield State Forest. It has a small brook that connects to a large reservoir. As a family, we would fly fish there in the summer, mountain bike and enjoy the colors in the fall, and in the winter, we would cross-country ski. We’d go to bed thinking about this place.

My Sons Continue My Father’s Legacy

My oldest son is a gardener and a developer of organic foods and local things. He also sees hunting as a component of a locavore’s connection to the land. He sees the harvesting of game as equally important as the harvesting of a garden. He works for Vermont Senator Sanders and loves the out-of-doors. My middle son graduated from Dartmouth and lives at my house. He likes working outside. My youngest son is a sophomore at Boston College and he loves being outside doing things like cross-country skiing and hiking, so there is an athleticism connected to his outdoor experience.

Having Nature Nearby

Every parent realizes how much children enrich our lives. Every day you wonder “what would I be if I didn’t have these children in my life?” I feel the same way about natural places near my home. My life would be a little emptier. Being a parent, husband, or member of the local conservation commission would be a little harder. I could do it, but it would be a little harder without my special place or two or three. That’s what gets me going and I want to share it with other people and make sure they have a special outdoor retreat – a Cotton Brook. I think if everybody could have a deep  connection with the out-of-doors, then everyone would be a little happier. Our whole society would be a little more positive.

Having wild outdoors spaces close to home is critical. That’s what motivates me – all the exercise and bonding with children, awareness of fish and wildlife. It’s got to be close  so we have to make sure there are places like this in all communities. I am inspired by National wildlife Federation’s work realizing these places have to be in your backyard, for it to be part of the fabric of your family.

My place was Cotton Brook, and I want everybody to have a Cotton Brook in their lives.

Support Our Work

George works to create a safe place for wildlife in the Northeast United States. Your donation helps wildlife and protects habitat.

1. Name that Lichen – Auction Ends on December 15th

This clever auction is asking people to bid for the opportunity to name species of Lichen. There are two species to name and bids will be benefit two Canadian wildlife charities – The Land Conservancy (TLC) of British Columbia  and the Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA). Donations will help these charities protect wildlife corridors and forests – but I think the coolest part is you’ll have a say in the history of a species of animal.

2.  extInked – Endangered Species Tattoos

This effort started in 2009, the year of Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday. It’s a lifetime promise to be an ambassador for wildlife. It began with the Ultimate Holding Company along with the support of leading conservation organizations. They identified 100 rare and  endangered British species which were beautifully illustrated in pen and ink by Jai Redman. Take a look at the wildlife gallery. If you like science tattoos there’s an incredible collection of them here.

3. Phylomon (The more accurate but equally fun version of Pokemon)

 
I think the Phylo project is brilliant.  The project began as a reaction to a study which revealed that: kids know more about Pokemon creatures than they do about real creatures. Much of the work we do at the National Wildlife Federation with Ranger Rick and Be Out There tries to combat this, but the Phylo project approached the problem in a totally new way: Put out a game better than Pokemon.

Mixing crowd-sourced art and information from scientists, this game celebrates biodiversity and the magnificent species that inhabit the earth. You kids/adults won’t even realize they are learning.
What are your favorite, positive campaigns? I’d love to read about them!

Check out this new video shot at Yosemite National Park.

Click here to view the embedded video.

There is no difference between this scene at Yosemite and road crossings all over the Northeast. In fact, the Northeast has an insane amount of roads that wildlife have to traverse to find food, shelter and mates.

The National Wildlife Federation’s Northeast Regional Center is working to make wildlife crossings safe for people and wildlife as part of a Wildlife Corridor Initiative. For more information, check out one of our earlier blogs: “The Moose that Stole the Show.” That post chronicles another amazing road crossing of a moose during a press conference NWF had organized about priority wildlife road crossings in that area.

Critical Paths is a model project that seeks to maintain natural wildlife migration corridors by identifying critical wildlife road crossings in the State of Vermont. Recently, we have targeted the landscape between the northern Green Mountains and the Northeast Kingdom. The project uses a combination of cutting-edge computer modeling and good old fashion on-site field work to determine where bottlenecks and impermeable crossings exist that can impede the free movement of animals. This project was made possible with funding from the Wildlife Conservation Society, Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife and generous donations for individuals.

It’s great to see these bears frolicking at Yosemite. Do you have photos to share of America’s public lands? Share them in our monthly photo challenge.

Please give today to help create safe pathways for wildlife, and protect vulnerable animals across the country from the many threats they face.

Pronghorn like this one in New Mexico are among species that need wide open spaces over which they can wander. The elk shown in the cover photo for this blog belongs to a species that migrates been high and low altitudes and needs habitat corridors for travel in between.

Beginning in the early 1900s and continuing for much of the 20th century, conservationists focused on protecting core areas for wildlife—biologically diverse habitats designated as wildlife refuges, wilderness areas, parks and other units.

But since the 1970s, scientists have learned that protecting habitat “islands” is insufficient for wildlife survival.

“Isolated populations suffer a variety of threats,” Kevin Crooks, associate professor of wildlife conservation at Colorado State University, says. “For example, isolation prevents animals from traveling to important foraging or breeding sites. It also heightens genetic risks, such as inbreeding and loss of evolutionary potential to adapt to changing environmental conditions.”

Biologists now recognize that protected areas, even seemingly vast places such as Yellowstone National Park, need to be connected to one another if wildlife is to survive much beyond the next century. These connections often are called corridors.

Here are five things you should know about wildlife corridors:

1. Many wildlife species need to move far and wide to survive.

Each summer, elk leave river valleys to graze on nutritious grasses and forbs in high mountain meadows. Some grizzly bears ramble over an area of 800 square miles yearly. Young gray wolves may travel scores of miles in search of new home ranges. During spring 2009, researchers with the Wildlife Conservation Society tracked a young wolverine that traveled more than 500 miles, from Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park down to north-central Colorado, the first confirmed record of the species in that state since 1919.

2. Long-distance journeys are getting harder for wildlife to undertake.

Roads, fences, rail lines, exurban housing and other developments increasingly chop large parcels of habitat into isolated pieces. This fragmentation lessens what conservation biologists call “connectivity”—the degree to which the landscape allows animals to move from one place to another. Steve Torbit, NWF Rocky Mountain Regional Center executive director: “Every time you put down a road, drill a gas well, erect a transmission line, whatever, it has an impact on connectivity. Wildilfe can’t just move over to the other side of the mountain anymore. It’s all developed. There is no other side of the mountain anymore.”

3. Protected wildlife corridors help wildlife survive.

Also known as greenways, linkages and passageways, these tracts of habitat link two or more larger core areas. Some corridors are naturally occurring, such as woodlands along streams, but others are made by humans, like the 42 culverts recently installed under stretches of U.S. Highway 93 on the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana to make the roadway permeable to wildlife. Another example is the fencing in 2001 of a forested tract running through the golf course of Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge in Alberta’s Jasper National Park—the 1,100-foot-wide corridor allows wolves to use a historical route through the golf course and gain access to low-elevation habitat containing elk and other prey.

4. Protecting strips of land between core habitats can help populations remain viable, but they’re no guarantee.

Some narrow greenways make prey species more vulnerable to edge-hunting predators such as coyotes, skunks, red foxes and domestic cats. In other cases, animals refuse to use their appointed corridors. Consequently, conservationists have broadened their scope to encompass entire ecological regions. Jodi Hilty, director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s North American programs: “Wildlife don’t recognize country, state or international borders, and neither can we if we want to maintain wildlife connectivity.”

5. National Wildlife Federation is working on corridors.

NWF’s Northeastern Regional Center in Montpelier, Vermont, is working with The Nature Conservancy and some 20 other private and public entities to create a vast habitat corridor that will connect six wildlife-rich landscapes in the Northern Appalachians and span a total of 80 million acres across New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and two Canadian provinces. Wildlife in the area—which harbors alpine vegetation, old-growth forest and large blocks of unfragmented forest—includes such locally at-risk creatures as lynx, moose, black bear, pine marten and fisher. Funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Staying Connected Initiative seeks to protect habitat from fragmentation and climate change and to restore landscape connections. George Gay, NWF senior manager: “We want to empower local groups and citizens through education and outreach.”

You too can help protect wildlife corridors.

Adapted from the National Wildlife magazine story “Freedom of Movement” by Tom Dickson.

The photos associated with this blog were donated by a competitor in the annual National Wildlife Photo Contest. If you are a nature photographer, you may want to participate this year in the 41st annual National Wildlife Photo Contest. In addition to cash awards, winning photos will appear in National Wildlife magazine and on the NWF website.

Help support National Wildlife Federation’s work to provide corridors for wildlife. >>

Conservationists don’t organize a press conference to bring attention to a critical wildlife crossing and end up causing a traffic jam.

Not even close (more than a dozen cars stopping along the road in Vermont is a serious traffic jam no doubt).

Moose Makes Crossing

NWF Northeast Regional Center is working to make wildlife crossings safe for people and wildlife as part of a Wildlife Corridor Initiative

The real star of this traffic jam (and press conference) was a beautiful moose that made a “timely” appearance along the road that we were drawing attention to at a press conference just a few hundred yards away.

People were pulling on to the shoulder to take pictures when they saw a local television station reporter and the film crew capturing some great film of this beautiful creature (the TV crew ended up being late for our press conference and we had no idea why they were late until we heard the story after the event ended, so sorry I didn’t get photos of this specific moose).

To show you that I am not stretching the truth, check out this great Burlington Free press article covering the May 18^th event that starts with the true tale.

“Nearly a dozen cars were parked along a stretch of Vermont 100 about noon on Wednesday, their drivers snapping photos or using binoculars to eye a leggy moose grazing in a wetland a few yards from the busy highway.

By happenstance, state officials and wildlife advocates had gathered just up the road to discuss their efforts — and a growing partnership — to address the problem illustrated by the moose: the identification, protection and safety of critical wildlife crossing spots along Vermont’s roads.” (Burlington Free Press).

If the moose visit was not enough for us wildlife lovers, right in the middle of the press conference a friendly woodpecker started noisily pecking away a few yards away as if to remind us that birds also need connected wildlife habitat. Check out these great photos of a bobcat, woodchuck and deer using engineered wildlife crossings.

NWF Northeast Wildlife Corridor Initiative

All this excitement was packed into a wonderful press event where project partners, local community leaders, property owners and the public talked about one of the National Wildlife Federation’s Northeast Regional Center’s key initiatives called “Critical Paths”.

Speakers at the event included Patrick Berry, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife, Sue Minter, Deputy Secretary, Vermont Agency of Transportation, Jesse Mohr, NWF’s wildlife biologist and consultant, Jamey Fidel, VNRC, Forest and Biodiversity Program Director & General Counsel, Rob Hoelscher, Wildlife Biologist, Green Mountain National Forest. For some great photos of the speakers, click here.

The press conference was scheduled to highlight the importance of a key road crossing located on Highway 100 which runs from Interstate 89 in Waterbury north to Stowe, Vermont. See attached map (below) of the crossing.

Curtis Fisher Speaks at Critical Paths Press Conference

Critical Paths is a model project that seeks to maintain natural wildlife migration corridors by identifying critical wildlife road crossings in the State of Vermont. Recently, we have targeted the landscape between the northern Green Mountains and the Northeast Kingdom. The project uses a combination of cutting-edge computer modeling and good old fashion on-site field work to determine where bottlenecks and impermeable crossings exist that can impede the free movement of animals.

We also had a great turnout of local organizations and individuals, including the Stowe Land Trust, Waterbury and Stowe Environmental Commissions, Green Mountain By-Way Committee and local business owners.

This project was made possible with funding from the Wildlife Conservation Society, Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife and generous donations for individuals.

Help support National Wildlife Federation’s work to provide corridors for wildlife >>

Take the desert southwest.  It’s consistently sunny and close to major population centers.  This would be the perfect place to develop solar energy.  But the southwest is also home to sensitive habitat and several wildlife species that are already suffering population declines.

For example-

• Desert Tortoise ( video)
• Sage grouse (video)
• Flat-tailed horned lizard (video)

Solar energy development in the southwest could hurt these species (and others like pronghorn, Mojave ground squirrel, bighorn sheep, and elk) if it occurs in important wildlife habitat like migration corridors or overwintering grounds.

Can an industry as new and as important to our clean energy future as the solar energy industry afford such a controversial reputation?

Photovoltaic panels used to collect solar energy

Fortunately, President Obama and the Department of the Interior are taking steps to make sure that solar energy projects are built quickly and in a wildlife-friendly way- for example, the recently released draft Solar Energy Program (Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement).

The solar energy program identifies 24 Solar Energy Zones on public land that could be developed. These areas, about 700,000 acres in total, were chosen because they possess all the right ingredients for generating and delivering solar power to the American public, but the Interior Department determined they have minimal potential for negative impacts to important wildlife habitat.

Tell the Department of the Interior to make solar energy wildlife-friendly >>

The Solar Energy Zones are a great first step forward.  They’re a game-changer that will  let us develop solar energy rapidly and responsibly.

However, NWF believes that there is still more that the Department of the Interior must do to make solar energy wildlife-friendly.

First, additional vital wildlife habitat (such as winter ranges for big game) that overlaps with solar energy zones should receive protection.

Secondly, the Department of the Interior might also let developers use an additional 22 million acres of public land (outside of the Solar Energy Zones).

NWF thinks that’s a bad idea because:

1. The additional public lands have not been thoroughly examined for potential wildlife impacts.
2. There’s already more space in the 24 Solar Energy Zones than is needed to reach current or anticipated state renewable energy generation requirements.
3. Rather than open millions of acres to solar development, we should establish a process for identifying more solar energy zones if they’re needed in the future.

Solar Energy Zones are a great idea because the best way to get solar projects built quickly is to plan them responsibly from the start.  By keeping areas outside of the 24  Solar Energy Zones off-limits to development and thoroughly examining the Solar Energy Zones for  sensitive wildlife habitat, the Department of the Interior will set a strong precedent for responsible solar energy development in the United States.

Tell the Department of the Interior to make solar energy wildlife-friendly >>

The result has been that even in our largest wild places, like Yellowstone National Park’s 2.2 million acres, wildlife populations are becoming isolated from one another, shutting off their ability to move from place to place, as ecology may demand, while turning them into genetically isolated groups.

Studies show that even our largest parks may not be able to sustain populations of large mammals much beyond the next century.

The solution to this isolation, as discussed in a current National Wildlife magazine story, is wildlife corridors, also known as greenways, linkages and passageways. These tracts of habitat link two or more larger core wildlife areas.

Some are naturally occurring, such as the Milk River and its tributaries, along which pronghorn migrate between Canada and Montana, while others are made by humans, like 42 culverts recently installed under stretches of U.S. Highway 93 on the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana, making the roadway permeable to wildlife.

Now in its 75th year of wildlife advocacy, National Wildlife Federation has a long history of seeking protection for wildlife habitat. Here are four corridor projects you should know about that are supported by NWF and/or its affiliates.

4 Wildlife Corridor Projects We’re Working On

1. The Staying Connected Initiative

National Wildlife Federation’s Northeastern Regional Center in Montpelier, Vermont, is working with The Nature Conservancy and some 20 other private and public entities to create a vast habitat  corridor that will connect six wildlife-rich landscapes in the Northern Appalachians and span a total of 80 million acres across New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and two Canadian provinces.

Wildlife in the area—which harbors alpine vegetation, old-growth forest and large blocks of unfragmented forest—includes such locally at-risk creatures as lynx, moose, black bear, pine marten and fisher.

Funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Staying Connected Initiative seeks to protect habitat from fragmentation and climate change and to restore landscape connections.

“We approach this goal in five ways,” says George Gay, NWF senior Safeguards Program manager:

1. Working to make roads safer and more permeable to wildlife, an objective that also  improves human safety on roads;
2. Applying conservation science, such as mapping, to determine a baseline for regional wildlife habitat and restoration;
3. Assisting towns with “development in the right areas and protection of sensitive natural resources”;
4. Helping private landowners manage backyard habitats–an important factor in Vermont, where 80 percent of all land is in private hands, Gay says; and
5. Partnering with land trusts for permanent wildlife habitat protection.

The initiative seeks to increase awareness of wildlife and its needs so that towns and private landowners will incorporate wildlife into planning and management.

“We want to empower local groups and citizens through education and outreach,’” Gay says. “It works out really nicely from the National Wildlife Federation’s point of view, because it’s grassroots advocacy.”

2. Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y)

The Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y) involves a project area of 8,000 square miles and more than 200 cooperating agencies, organizations and businesses, making Y2Y the largest landscape-scale conservation effort in North America. The initiative identifies critical core habitats and threats to wildlife connectivity and partners with citizens’ groups, municipalities and industry in order to manage the use of motorized vehicles in backcountry areas, to make dumpsters bear-proof so grizzlies don’t get into trouble and have to be killed, and to convince mining, logging and energy companies to fragment less habitat.

3. Florida Wildlife Corridor

The Florida Wildlife Federation is working to protect a greenway called the Florida Wildlife Corridor, which would allow animals to move freely from the Everglades, at the southern end of the state, into Georgia at the northern end.

4. South Coast Wildlands Project

The South Coast Wildlands Project is working to protect 15 critical linkages and wildlife-compatible surrounding lands in coastal southern California, one of the world’s largest metropolitan areas.

Developing new corridors and protecting existing linkages are two keys to ensuring the survival of viable populations of large animals and of animals that need a lot of elbow room, such as pronghorn, Florida panthers, lynx, wolves and grizzlies.

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Check out our holiday deals that help support the National Wildlife Federation’s work to protect wildlife >>

With many people on the road traveling to visit family or friends over the holidays, here are a few tips you can follow to make sure you share the road with wildlife.

Tips for Sharing the Road With Wildlife

1) Think about Wildlife While Driving: This may seem like a silly suggestion, but the more you mentally prepare for your reaction to seeing an animal in the road, the more likely you will respond quickly enough to avoid it!

2) Go the Speed Limit: I know I know, it's hard to do sometimes–but really going the speed limit will allow you more time to react to wildlife such as deer darting across the road. While this may be the more obvious tip, it is probably the best thing you can do! The more reaction time the better.

3) Turn on Your Brights When No Cars are Coming: At night, turning on your brights will help spot deer and other animals crossing the road because their eyes will reflect the light.

4) Pay Attention to Signs: Most wildlife warning signs are there because there have been previous incidents–so paying special attention when you see the signs is an obvious but easy way to avoid a collision. Also keep in mind that just because you are on a busy road does not mean wildlife are unable to surprise you there.

5) Know When Animals Are Active: This is another important one, many animals that often get hit are nocturnal and so are either active very early in the morning or in the evening. Animals like deer are also active at these times but are mostly looking for a place to bed down for the night.

More Links:

• When Wildlife Hits the Road

• NWF's Critical Paths for Wildlife Project

• Touching Story about Wildlife Corridors

• Neat
  Story about Wildlife Surveillance

A BIG thank you goes to those of you who have participated in Subaru's Share the Love Event and chosen NWF as your charity. If you've recently bought a Subaru it's not too late!

Looking forward to years of sharing the love with wildlife. With you all it's possible.

Though his statement on Wednesday was short,  Transportation Secretary nominee Rep. Ray LaHood had a lot to say on the big picture of the way we move, declaring that transportation development “must be sustainable” and that we must invest in railroads and mass transit if we want to confront climate change.

With the urgent need to reverse global warming, it’s high time we have infrastructure that works for us and for wildlife. If you haven’t done so, please urge new leaders in Congress to  make rails and trails investments, which both stimulate our economy and conserve natural resources.

And how about taking it one step further? Let’s not forget about walking and biking – the best way to reduce our carbon footprint and experience nature at the same time!