Congress Being Asked To Expand Program To Create Wildlife Crossings

Across the United States, there are many thousands of collisions between vehicles and wildlife each year, killing people and animals and causing millions of dollars of property damages. Some solutions revolve around creating bridges specifically for wildlife, from elk and mountain lions to even turtles and salamanders.

It's not an inexpensive program. Five years ago the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provided $350 million to be spent over five years on building such crossings. But the funding runs out this year, and the National Parks Conservation Association has been urging Congress to not just renew the program, but see that it provides $200 million a year going forward.

"Demand's been off the charts" for grants through the program launched in 2021, said Bart Melton, senior director of NPCA's wildlife program, noting that grant requests were roughly five times the available funds.

"For bridge replacements, highway safety improvement, federal lands, transportation access, lots of other programs, you can now spend that money on efforts that reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions," Melton said during National Parks Traveler's weekly podcast in laying out the benefits of expanding the program. "The grant program is critically important."

According to Rene Callahan, executive director of Bozeman, Montana-based ARC Solutions that seeks to facilitate new approaches to separating wildlife and vehicles, collisions between the two cost the country billions of dollars a year.

"To think about the magnitude of this issue, we are spending more than $11 billion — and that's with a 'b' — a year on this issue as a society," Callahan said on the podcast. "That includes 200 lost lives every year, 30,000 injuries, and then a huge amount of property damage as well."

She added during the podcast that wildlife crossings could lead to a 97 percent reduction in wildlife-vehicle collisions.

"I'm not aware of any other transportation improvement that is going to get you that kind of a return on investment," said Callahan.

Last fall a bipartisan group of U.S. senators introduced legislation to reauthorize the Wildlife Crossings Program, a competitive grant program with the goal of reducing wildlife-vehicle collisions across state and federal roads and highways while improving habitat connectivity for terrestrial and aquatic species.  

Under the program, $125 million in grants for 16 wildlife crossing projects in 16 states were awarded during 2025. One project was awarded to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, which receive $1.7 million to fund pre-construction design and permitting for a wildlife crossing project along the Appalachian National Scenic Trail over Interstate 90 through western Massachusetts. Another awarded $33.2 million to the Oregon Department of Transportation to build a wildlife crossing along Interstate 5 within southwest Oregon’s Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument.

"Anybody who's driven from Bozeman (Montana) airport to Gardner, Montana, to visit Yellowstone in the fall, you see some wildlife along the road there, and it's big and you don't want to hit it in your car," Melton said on the podcast. "There's a real practical element to that. But the same can be said for going to West Virginia to New River Gorge (National Park and Preserve) and keeping an eye out for salamanders and turtles and other species."

Among the most famous wildlife crossings to date is the Wallis Anneberg Wildlife Crossing in California, a yet-to-be-completed overpass envisioned to span 10 lanes of traffic streaming along U.S. 101. The crossing is seen as particularly crucial for panthers that roam the Santa Monica Mountains. It also carries an estimated cost of $114 million, though that's an exceptional price tag, said Melton.

"There are solutions of all shapes and sizes," he said, noting that existing culverts can be enlarged to make it easy for animals like Florida panthers to avoid collisions.

"Through studies and analysis we can determine where those wildlife-vehicle collision hot spots are located," the NPCA official said. "And once that hot spot's identified, finding the best solution, the most cost effective solution, to move wildlife through that space is critically important. That can relate to what type of species are going to utilize the crossing. Some species prefer to go under the road. Some prefer to go over.

"... Sometimes you do need something that goes over the road, the direction they prefer to go to avoid predators," Melton added. "Those can be expensive. However, the cost-benefit analysis on these structures shows time and time again that they very much pay for themselves in terms of offsetting motorist collision costs. There's the health and human safety aspect, and integrating them into existing road building plans can also help reduce costs."

A map created by NPCA points out where proposed and funded Wildlife Crossing Pilot Program projects are located.

To learn more about wildlife crossings and the campaign to fund more, listen to National Parks Traveler Episode 370.