MISSOULA — Montana received a federal grant to study wildlife collisions along U.S. Highway 93 near the Idaho border, but some question whether the state will do more than just a study.
In late December, the Montana Department of Transportation learned it had been awarded a Federal Highway Administration grant for more than $424,000 to study wildlife collisions and make a plan to reduce them along a 30-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 93 between Darby and the Idaho border. The grant provides 80% of a project’s cost, requiring a 20% match from the recipient.
The grant is funded by theWildlife Crossings Pilot Program, a program created and funded by the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to improve safety by reducing collisions with wildlife while also improving habitat connectivity and supporting the survival of threatened or endangered species.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law made a total of $350 million available to the Wildlife Crossings Pilot Program through FY 2026. The Highway 93 feasibility study is one of 16 projects across the nation that received a total of $125 million for fiscal year 2024-2025.
Half of the 16 grants went to fund non-construction projects — usually plan development, permitting or feasibility studies such as the Highway 93 project.
The other eight grants will fund the construction of actual wildlife crossings, such as the grant of more than $20 million awarded to the Idaho Department of Transportation to build three wildlife underpasses with fencing along 6 miles of US-30 at Rocky Point to reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions along a mule deer migration route.
This was the second round of Wildlife Crossings Pilot Program grants, which received 61 applications from 28 states. In the first round of awards, the Federal Highway Administration awarded $119 million for 19 wildlife crossing projects in 17 states for FY 2022-2023.
WATCH previous coverage: Proposed Sixmile wildlife crossing could make I-90 safer for all
In the first round, Montana projects received two grants: another $424,000 for MDT to do a feasibility study of 68 miles of Interstate 90 from Missoula east to Garrison; and $8.6 million for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes to build a wildlife overpass spanning US Highway 93 within the Ninepipe National Wildlife Management Area where grizzly bears regularly cross.
Feasibility studies provide important information such as the optimal spots to locate wildlife crossings should the opportunity arise, said Joel Boucher, MDT preconstruction engineer. However, MDT has rarely done anything with the information collected in feasibility studies, according to a former biologist that contracted with MDT.
When Robert Harris of Hamilton learned a few weeks ago about the grant to study Highway 93, he wondered if it was a waste of federal dollars. He has good reason to wonder.
In the early 1990s, MDT was planning to redo Highway 93 South, expanding it from two to four lanes. But they’d documented a 300% increase in the number of deer collisions on the highway from 1989 to 1993. So the department paid Harris to conduct a study of deer collisions between Lolo and Hamilton and come up with recommendations.
Having lived in the area since 1976, Harris already knew a problem existed.
“At that time, we had zero animal-crossing warning signs. That was one of the minor points that I said needed to be addressed in some locations. MDT poo-pooed that after they read my report,” Harris said. “They said everyone knows there are lots of deer along Highway 93. I said there are many tourists that don’t know that,”
For his study, Harris gathered data from diverse sources. He got estimates of damage totals by visiting autobody shops. He identified collision hot spots using data from the highway crews that picked up and recorded the location of road kill.
“That was helpful to me because I could identify clusters of deer that were hit. MDT said they didn’t want to bother with that,” Harris said. “In one year, more than 1,100 deer were killed between Missoula and Sula. That doesn’t count the Eastside Highway. On that side, there were estimates of 400 to 500 deer a year due to all the agricultural land over there. I have no doubt that it is much higher now because we have far more people. And we might as well take down the speed limit signs because people are driving much faster.”
Harris made about a dozen recommendations. Some recommendations were as cheap and simple as incorporating wildlife warning signs, reducing nighttime speed limits and adding wildlife defensive driving techniques to driver education courses. He warned that four lanes would create a huge wildlife barrier. The recommendations fell on mostly deaf ears, Harris said.
“What was frustrating to me is although I was being paid by MDT, they had absolutely no interest in doing anything about the problem. So many of the recommendations as to what would help mitigate these problems were never brought up, applied or anything whatsoever by MDT,” Harris said. “There was a whole lot of work done on this, and yet it’s like we’re poised to do it again. I find it odd we got $400,000 to throw at this again when MDT didn’t ever use the first one.”
Ultimately, between 2005 and 2012, MDT installed seven culverts under Highway 93, and bridges over various creeks that flow into the Bitterroot River account for the 12 other crossing locations between Lolo and Hamilton.
A 2013 research progress report recorded that white-tailed deer had good success rates — better than 90% — with about six of those locations. The report promised more research, but nothing has been published since.
In addition, elk are now part of the mix. Anyone who regularly drives Highway 93 South knows that herds of elk pose a collision problem that wasn’t as big in the late ‘90s. And elk can’t use some crossing structures built for deer.
But MDT won’t likely come back to build additional crossing structures now that work on Highway 93 South is complete. MDT builds wildlife crossings only during road projects. Even then, MDT won’t usually fork out money to build a crossing unless it’s something as simple as enlarging an existing bridge underpass. The only reason Highway 93 North has a large overpass and several underpasses is because the CSKT demanded them.
WATCH previous coverage: Hope for future Western Montana wildlife crossings to be more effective
Boucher said MDT won’t pay for special wildlife crossings even though “we recognize the need for wildlife crossings.”
“We’re just always up against the challenge that our needs are far outpacing our actual budget, and we have a lot of miles of road that we have to take care of,” Boucher said. “So we’re leaning heavily on NGO’s and local partnerships so we can hopefully get some funding to deliver some projects. The nice thing about these feasibility studies is they help pinpoint good locations, good solutions that we can use to work toward getting other federal grants or work with local agencies to help get something delivered. Also if there’s another project being developed close-by, maybe there’s some tweaking we can do to incorporate more wildlife accommodation.”
But in the past, MDT employees have implied that MDT is not interested in federal money for crossings.
A year ago, MDT chief operating officer Dwane Kailey told the Legislative Environmental Quality Council that MDT hadn’t submitted many proposals for Wildlife Crossings Pilot Program grants because he assumed more grants would go to local and tribal governments. However, state agencies have received a majority of the grants.
During the 2023 Legislature, MDT financial officer Larry Flynn testified against a bill that would have created a one-time allocation of $1 million to be matching funds for Wildlife Crossings Pilot Program grants. Flynn said MDT didn’t need the grant money, because MDT could use the federal gas tax — which is a 87%-13% match — to pay for crossing structures. But that hasn’t happened.
So Harris predicts the two MDT feasibility studies that received the Wildlife Crossings Pilot Program grants will end up just sitting on the shelf, much as his report did.
“Engineers don’t mind spending money as long as it’s on road construction,” Harris said. “I worked at MDT environmental bureau in-house for two years. But the environmental bureau was just a whisker of the influence as to how decisions were made at MDT. I was paid well by them, but they didn’t care about my work. They were required to do it under EPA requirements, and they had us do work to comply with federal requirements. But they’d be happy if it just disappeared.”
MDT is also currently studying the segment of Highway 93 South between Missoula and Lolo. But that study was prompted more by local population growth and the resulting issues with traffic safety, although collisions with wildlife are part of the mix.
Contact Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.
