Highway overpasses successful at curbing wildlife/vehicle collisions
By Christie Greene
The sun was warm as we gathered on Vail Pass last July. Paige Singer, a biologist for Rocky Mountain Wild, and Lisi Lohre, Citizen Science intern for the Denver Zoo, handed out hardhats and bright orange vests to the three volunteers before we piled into an SUV. We drove to a spot between Copper Mountain and Vail Pass, and parked on the shoulder along westbound Interstate 70, near where a number of motion-triggered cameras had been placed in the spring.
Our first stop, a 20-minute walk just about straight uphill, led us to a camera mounted on a narrow pole. Singer and I unlocked the camera, recorded the data, replaced batteries and removed the memory card containing the photographs, inserting an empty one. In total, about 10 cameras were visited that day.
