Effort Underway to Create Safe Passages for Wildlife Across Highway 82

A new citizens’ advocacy organization that aims to reduce wildlife and vehicle collisions in the Roaring Fork Valley has started fundraising to get the effort rolling.

Roaring Fork Safe Passages recently received a $10,000 grant from the Aspen Skiing Co. Employee Environment Foundation. Roaring Fork Safe Passages is now attempting to raise $150,000 by June 1 to complete a prioritization study that is vital to receiving state and federal funding to build mitigation structures, said the new nonprofit’s director, Cecily DeAngelo. The ultimate goal is to construct land bridges, tunnels and fencing in strategic places along Highway 82 and Highway 133 in the Crystal River Valley.

DeAngelo said that while growing up in the ­Roaring Fork Valley she felt there was nothing that could be done to reduce wildlife and vehicle collisions. In recent years, she became aware of efforts elsewhere in the state, such as Summit County, to create safe passages.

“Animals need infrastructure and where it has been properly built and designed, there is great success at minimizing wildlife-vehicle collisions,” DeAngelo said.

The Colorado Department of Transportation devotes limited dollars to infrastructure for safe crossings and has created a statewide needs assessment and priority list. Although Highway 82 was ranked among the top routes for collisions, it didn’t make the cut among the highest priorities in the state. That’s where ­DeAngelo came in. She decided earlier this year that a local organization was needed to develop a plan and get projects “shovel ready” in the Roaring Fork River watershed.

Another important aspect of building infrastructure is restoring fragmented habitat for deer, elk and other wildlife. Colorado Parks and Wildlife is concerned about low calf-survival rates in elk herds in the Roaring Fork Valley. The state agency, with financial support from Pitkin County Open Space and Trails, launched a six-year study in 2019 to learn about the movements of the Avalanche elk herd. That herd, which has numerous subsets, is generally located between Independence Pass and Glenwood Springs.

Conservationists believe that structures that provide safe passages across Highway 82 for elk would open up thousands of acres of high-quality habitat that is currently inaccessible or underutilized. Expanding habitat could be an important step in restoring wildlife populations.

Roaring Fork Safe Passage’s efforts to complete a prioritization study goes hand in hand with the work of another Roaring Fork Valley nonprofit, the Watershed Biodiversity Initiative. WBI is led by Tom Cardamone, the former longtime executive director of Aspen Center for Environmental Studies.

WBI began working with public land managers and other conservation groups in late 2018 to complete a biodiversity study of the 1-million acre Roaring Fork Watershed. In a WBI publication called, “The Story Behind the Biodiversity Study,” it says, “the driving force behind the idea of an accounting of biodiversity in the Watershed was concern about dwindling elk and deer populations regionally, the seeming evaporation of billions of birds across the continent, and shocking reports about plunging insect biomass including the pollinators that are critical to agriculture as well as the very future of flowering native plants.”

The “heavy lifting” on the study was undertaken by a team of scientists with the Colorado Natural Heritage Program. It was framed and guided by a team from the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Aspen Valley Land Trust, ACES, Roaring Fork Conservancy and the Aspen Global Change Institute.

The draft biodiversity inventory was completed in December 2021 and then field-checked for accuracy and refined. The final report was delivered in September 2022 and is available to the community.

“The study represents the best available science to inform the watershed community of many opportunities for protecting and restoring biodiversity on a landscape scale,” said a press release from WBI. “The study gives science-based traction to the value our community places in healthy, viable wildlife populations and native plant communities.”

Cardamone said Roaring Fork Safe Passages is a perfect example of how the study can be put to use. The inventory and information on migration routes of elk and other wildlife will help the Safe Passages group complete its own priorities for wildlife infrastructure. DeAngelo said WBI’s study identifies the critical points of constraints between areas of high-value habitat. The objective of Roaring Fork Safe Passages is to build on WBI’s work and conduct a valley-wide study and mitigation plan that is specific to Highway 82 and Highway 133. That plan will identify and prioritize areas that need attention and suggest mitigation strategies, such as tunnels, bridges or fencing. DeAngelo said completing that study is a necessary step to secure state and federal funding.

To learn more about Roaring Fork Safe Passages or to make a donation, go to www.roaringforksafepassages.org.

To learn more about the Watershed Biodiversity Initiative and its inventory, go to www.watershedbiodiversityinitiative.org.

Originally posted in the Aspen Daily News.