Wildlife friendly culverts

[KennethHH]

Please visit my wildlife friendly ciulverts site.
http://wildlfc.webs.com/index.htm
Excerpt:
...Culverts have been installed for hundreds of years and this has removed habitat for 35 to 40 different wildlife species. There is a solution for this concern but only a few States in the US are incorporating the solution. Three main reasons why I believe many States do not install wildlife friendly culverts.

1. Huge culverts that allow large animal crossing of roads are very costly

2. Arched wildlife friendly culverts are also very costly

3. Replacement arched culverts may allow too much flow and housing flooded downstream

A high percentage of biomass of areas is composed mostly of small animals and installing wildlife friendly culverts only for these animals will minimize cost in item 1. Sketch SK-1 has a design where a standard circular culvert can be converted to a wildlife friendly culvert for the same cost except concrete footing and support will need to be added. This culvert should performance just as good as an arched culvert removing most of the added cost of item 2. Because replacement circular culverts have the same area as the old culvert seems like the new culvert resistance will not be more than the old culvert and there should not be much concern for adding flooding downstream removing most of the concern for item 3. This is only an idea and a review by design and engineering would need to be performed to determine if this is true....

[Bear]

I do agree with the culverts, they have been used here and saved many animals on Paynes prairie.

We have not had cars for hundreds of years though:-)

[KennethHH]

Thanks, the more I read about the culvert limitation of wildlife migration the more I shutter at the distress of wildlife. To think about it we we did not have cars for hundreds of years but we did stop wildlife means of travel for hundreds of years.
Ken

[Bear]

Yep, paynes praire (near Gainsville Fl) culverts were mainly put in place for reptiles and amphibians and was a huge success. Literally tens of thousands were killed by cars every year, Now in the tens to low hundreds.

A couple tunnels were made for bears on SR46 in Sorrento Fl, but they are almost never used by bears. As a matter of fact I pick up many dead bears on the roads less than 1 mile of either direction from them.

[KennethHH]

That is ashame. I wonder if a reflective tape could be put aroung a bear's neck. Just a wild thought but tracking devices stay on animals and maybe a type of reflective collar would stay but this would be a lot of work.
Ken

[Bear]

That is ashame. I wonder if a reflective tape could be put aroung a bear's neck. Just a wild thought but tracking devices stay on animals and maybe a type of reflective collar would stay but this would be a lot of work.
Ken

Bears tear through some thick brush, sometimes pulling out their ear tags. I dont know how we would keep the collar from getting torn off. Once a bear is trapped they generally never go in a trap again. Good thought though, I wish we could do something for everyones sake, we loose an average of about 150 bears per year to vehicles and many people are hospitalized. We had 247 bears hit by cars two years ago. The estimate is 3000 bears living in the whole state with most being where I live.

I just picked up a 640 pound bear hit by a truck in the said location, he was 20 pounds heavier than the state record, it was a real shame.