British Columbia Launches New Program to Reduce Wildlife Collisions

[Cara J]

The East Kootenay region of British Columbia is no stranger to wildlife collisions with vehicles. In fact, in a typical year in British Columbia, more than 6,000 animals are killed by vehicles and over 18,000 animal deaths go unrecorded, according to the Wildlife Collision Prevention program — an initiative formed between the British Columbia Conservation Foundation and the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, to reduce wildlife collisions. But, as part of the B.C. Government’s new “B.C. on the Move” program, wildlife will get a better chance at steering clear of vehicle collisions. The 10-year transportation plan, developed in 2014, aims to improve the province’s transportation system. And, wildlife collisions are a major problem that the plan will focus on starting with Highway 3, which runs east from a district municipality called Hope, close to Vancouver, almost all the way to the Alberta border, about 520 miles away. “The area we’re working on is in the Southeast corner Kootenay region that we call the Serengeti of North America because it’s full of elk and deer and moose,” said B.C. Minister of Energy and Mines Bill Bennett. “There is a very high incidence of wildlife vehicle collisions here because it’s a very [...]

 

Read more: http://wildlife.org/british-columbia-launches-new-program-to-reduce-wildlife-collisions/