Safe Passage

The I-40 Pigeon River Gorge Wildlife Crossing Project

wildlife crossings

An interview with filmmaker Ted Grudowski, director of ‘Cascade Crossroads’ documentary

By Frances Figart

Safe Passage is excited to host Ted Grudowski, whose films about road ecology in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State will be featured at The Crossing, a short-film screening coming to Asheville’s Pléb Urban Winery in the River Arts District on Thursday, October 26.

Released in January 2018, Cascade Crossroads is a 30-minute documentary film about building bridges, both literal and metaphorical. The setting is Interstate 90 just east of Snoqualmie Pass in Washington’s Cascade Mountains. This location is the intersection of a major east-west transportation corridor and a crucial north-south wildlife migration pathway. The film chronicles a monumental project combining conservation, collaboration, and innovation that eventually led to the construction of one of North America’s largest wildlife crossing projects in conjunction with major infrastructure improvements for motorists.

Cascades Crossroads won two Telly awards in 2018, gold in the nonprofit category and bronze in the nature/wildlife category. The follow-up film, Critter Crossings in the Cascades, was also well received. I asked Ted to tell us more about how he got into making movies that highlight the kind of change we want to see in the Pigeon River Gorge, East Tennessee and Western North Carolina, and throughout Southern Appalachia.

Filmmaker Ted Grudowski directed “Cascade Crossroads” and “Critter Crossings in the Cascades,” two of the films Safe Passage Fund Coalition is screening at its Oct. 26 event, The Crossing.

Q: How did you first become interested in and start a career in filmmaking? 

A: It was partly a career path that was heading in that direction and partly stumbling into it. I studied photography while attending Southern Illinois University but after graduating the internet and digital media were beginning to rise. I went from photography, to multimedia, to creating short videos for an internet audience, but the lure of making something more substantial drew me to storytelling and making short documentary films.

Q: Do you recall any early experiences that made you aware of road ecology as an issue? 

A: I didn’t learn about the current concept of road ecology until I began making videos about it, but I sure remember seeing a lot of roadkill on the sides of roads growing up in the Midwest. In the spring there were always dead skunks everywhere! It seemed that there were more dead than alive.

Q: The I-90 Snoqualmie Pass East Project and the related wildlife crossings and roadway improvements have been called a win-win for people and animals that offers a new model for major infrastructure projects bisecting wild places. How did you get involved with the I-90 project? 

A: My first exposure to the project came through Conservation Northwest, a regional conservation nonprofit in the Pacific Northwest, who did a lot of public advocacy for the wildlife crossings as well as working to restore and acquire lands adjacent to the interstate. While the US Forest Service owned much of that land, there was still much of it owned by timber companies and other private landowners due to the legacy of checkerboard ownership from when railroads were being built across the western U.S. in the 19th century. The checkerboard legacy actually can be traced back to Abraham Lincoln!

RESERVE TICKETS TO ‘THE CROSSING’

I did a short video with my colleague Kris Browne around 2015 for Conservation Northwest highlighting their remote camera program in the forests of the Cascade Mountains in Washington. That program contributed to the realization that there was a major wildlife highway running north and south through the Cascades that was bisected by I-90. Shortly thereafter, the coalition of nonprofits and other groups was coming to an end because the decision to incorporate the wildlife passages into the highway improvements was already made and the first leg of funding secured. They wanted to document the story of how unlikely partnerships were made in order to get the passages and road improvements to happen, and so I was approached about making Cascade Crossroads.

Q: What was your process like working on Cascade Crossroads? 

A: Our production team, which included Kris Browne and Sandy Asher in addition to me, had many years of storytelling experience stemming from our time working together on a small-business news series for MSN.com, as well as Kris and Sandy’s experience working on afternoon news programs on local Seattle television. They have a great knack for finding a concise story within a very big picture, and I loved taking the framework they made and adding the visual and audio elements to create something informative but that still makes you feel all the feels. 

But when we started the film there was more than a dozen years of the story already in the past, so we relied heavily on media contributed by Washington State Department of Transportation, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, I-90 Wildlife Bridges Coalition and many more groups and individuals to tell the story. We were also very fortunate in having both Patty Garvey-Darda of the USFS and Brian White of WSDOT as our principal interviews because they are not only heroes in the story, but they are also very passionate, articulate, and great storytellers.

Q: Is there a particular moment when you saw the project was coming together and that felt like an “aha” moment for you? 

A: When we made the first short video in 2015, I didn’t really grasp the depth and breadth of how incredible and unlikely it was to build the wildlife passages, as well as the implications of re-connecting the north and south Cascades with its animal highways and ecosystems. Initially we were eager for a chance to create a longer story than we usually had the opportunity to tell, but after we began doing the background research, we all realized that there was something much bigger here unfolding, and that was very exciting.

Q: How was it different doing the follow-up film, Critter Crossings in the Cascades? 

A: Making Critter Crossings was very much like doing a victory lap in a sequel, because the successful results and improvements were already tangible, so it was a chance to show the world that this project was worth all the effort to make it happen. Cascade Crossroads had been very well received in film festivals and other public screenings, as well as winning some awards, so we knew that the public had an appetite for successful stories about helping wildlife. Plus, it gave us an opportunity to share the story and its success from the WSDOT perspective, because after all they were the ones who had to create the plan for building it all, turn that plan into reality and to demonstrate to the public that this was the right thing to do. 

And, oh how right it was! How often do civil engineers get to be heroes? There have been literally thousands of animal crossings since the passages were completed and the guide fencing installed, with some unexpected animals using the passages—not just elk, deer, cougars, bears and endangered aquatic species, but a badger and a moose as well.

Q: Wildlife crossings have become a much bigger topic in the news since you made the first film. Why do you think that is, and where do you think the US is headed in the future in terms of road ecology? 

A: People love animals, people love wildlife, and people love good news about people doing good things. It’s a counterpoint to all the bad news we are bombarded with about how people are doing things detrimental to our natural world, and everyone has seen dead animals by the roadside or even had a collision with an animal with their own car. The success of it all is quantifiable and undeniable. I hope it leads to a greater awareness of the natural world around us and our effect on it, and I hope it leads to accommodating wildlife becoming part of the vocabulary of all infrastructure in the United States.

Q: Cascade Crossroads aims to not only share the unique story of I-90 but also inspire action in other landscapes facing similar tensions between wildlife and roadways—like our Safe Passage project in the Pigeon River Gorge. Why are you excited about The Crossing and coming to Western North Carolina to be with the Safe Passage stakeholders for this event? 

A: I’m very excited because I get to come bringing good news and encouragement for your wildlife passages. I love seeing road ecology ideas taking root on that side of the country, and I’m excited to see what success stories you will write. The excitement of your community to provide and care for your own wildlife is infectious!

Why focus on the Pigeon River Gorge?

Aerial photos of I-40 in the Pigeon River Gorge by SouthWings.

By Steve Goodman, Safe Passage Co-Research Lead and Conservation Biologist for National Parks Conservation Association

Safe Passage is on a mission to improve wildlife’s ability to safely cross I-40 in the Pigeon River Gorge, resulting in improved public safety.

But, from a large landscape perspective, why have we chosen to expend valuable conservation and transportation resources here? And why now?

First, looking at a map of protected lands across the U.S., there is much less protected land in the East, and Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the surrounding national forest lands make up a substantial portion of it (Figure 1).

Furthermore, we’re right in the heart of The Nature Conservancy’s resilient and connected network designed to sustain biodiversity under a changing climate (Figure 2). This habitat corridor is critical for the long-term flow of regional plants and animals, yet I-40 has become a major barrier to wildlife movement. Researchers have estimated that in the Eastern U.S., only 2% of natural land areas retain enough connectivity to adequately allow plants and animals to track climate change. By adding wildlife corridors, we have an opportunity to increase that percentage tenfold.

Most compelling in a visual sense, however, is the now-famous Migrations in Motion map (Figure 3), produced by The Nature Conservancy. Based on modeling of the climactic needs of individual species, this animated map illustrates predicted movement routes of around 3,000 mammal, bird and amphibian taxa under current climate change projections, many of which are expected to track through the spine of the Southern Appalachians, including the Pigeon River Gorge.

Figure 1 – (Click to enlarge)
Figure 2 – (Click to enlarge)
Figure 3 – (Click to visit animated map)

Habituation at Harmon Den: Next steps for wildlife after crossing construction

After crossings are constructed, how soon can you expect wildlife to adapt to use new, safer passages?

Though infrastructure has been installed at the Harmon Den bridge in North Carolina (pictured above), more still must be done to attract wildlife to use the safer crossing. 

Progress is being made at the Harmon Den bridge in North Carolina, where our partners at the N.C. Department of Transportation recently constructed infrastructure for wildlife. Since then, we’ve begun some early monitoring of how wildlife are interacting with the new crossings, which include wildlife-friendly benches and cattle guards and will, in the future, include fencing.

Of course, it may take some time for wildlife to habituate to this improved crossing opportunity in the landscape, especially while vegetation in the area is still recovering from the recent construction. To improve success, it’s important that creekside vegetation — like fast-growing tulip popular, black birch, and red maple — continues to reestablish, as it will provide important cover and protection for traveling wildlife. Consideration should also be given, however, to restricting tractor trailer parking along the on- and off-ramps, which — because engines are often left running — creates noise and garbage (including human waste) that may potentially deter wildlife movement toward the new crossings. Another opportunity to encourage wildlife to use the crossings would be to clean up the crushed concrete spill that occurred during bridge construction along the bank of Cold Springs Creek.

Finally, it is important to note that although the opportunistic wildlife improvements at Harmon Den are important for wildlife connectivity and reducing vehicle collisions long-term, there are limitations to combined human–wildlife structures when compared to standalone structures for wildlife only. The Safe Passage Fund Coalition has made several research-based recommendations for standalone wildlife structures north and south of Harmon Den.

— Steve Goodman, Safe Passage Co-Research Lead

Day versus night view from the wildlife crossing at Harmon Den. Trucks parking on the on- and off-ramps can discourage wildlife from making the safe trip under the highway.

Spring signals a time for elk movement in the mountains

Elk 30216 and her calves throughout the years. During Safe Passage’s road ecology research in the Pigeon River Gorge, GPS collars revealed multiple years of one mother elk’s journey to and from her calving area.

While the elk population in and around Great Smoky Mountains National Park does not migrate, they do make some relatively longer seasonal movements. In these spring months, pregnant females will move away from their herd to give birth in isolated areas. Cows usually carry one calf and give birth in late May through June. In late summer when the calf is large enough, the pair will rejoin their herd, just in time for the rut (mating season) that occurs in late September through early October.

During our road ecology research in the Pigeon River Gorge, elk monitoring with GPS collars revealed multiple years of one elk’s journey to access her calving area. In both years of monitoring, she left the Cataloochee Valley in early spring and crossed the interstate to access her calving area north of the roadway.

In late summer, the cow and her calf would begin their journey back to the park, again having to navigate crossing I-40. In the two years of monitoring, this elk crossed I-40 107 times, with the majority of those crossings occurring at the Tennessee–North Carolina state border, where the Appalachian Trail crosses under the interstate via a road bridge, and also across a road surface just north of that area. 

In the map to the right, you can see her many crossings throughout the years — which she made both with and without her calves in tow, depending on the time of year. Each dot on the map represents the hourly location of this particular elk, Elk 30216.

— Liz Hillard, Safe Passage Co-Research Lead

Safe Passage research revealed the annual journey of one female elk, including 107 trips across I-40. Click the image to enlarge.

North Carolina House includes $5 million for wildlife crossings in 2023/2024 budget

Safe Passage Fund Coalition encourages state senate to appropriate full amount

The Safe Passage Fund Coalition applauds the North Carolina House of Representatives for appropriating $5 million in funding for infrastructure to help reduce wildlife–vehicle collisions across the state. This infrastructure — which includes overpasses, underpasses and fencing along roads and highways — is critical in increasing safety along roadways for wildlife and humans alike. 

“We are so grateful that the House has prioritized funding to reduce wildlife–vehicle collisions on Interstate 40 near the Smokies and elsewhere around North Carolina,” said Jeff Hunter, Southern Appalachian director of National Parks Conservation Association, a Safe Passage Fund Coalition member. “This is a win-win for wildlife and the motoring public. We encourage the Senate to appropriate $5 million in their budget to help leverage federal dollars to address this issue statewide.” 

According to the North Carolina Department of Transportation, 20,331 wildlife–vehicle collisions were reported across the state in 2019, and 18,607 such collisions were reported in 2020 — a decrease the NCDOT largely attributes to reduced travel during the COVID-19 pandemic. A 2021 release from the department additionally estimated that 7% of all reported vehicle crashes in the state involve animal strikes, with almost half occurring in the twilight hours or at night, between October and December. 

Safe Passage urges our North Carolina supporters to contact their state senator today to encourage them to request $5 million in the budget for wildlife crossings.

CONTACT YOUR SENATOR

“North Carolina’s funding to support wildlife safe passage across roads will help provide habitat connectivity essential for the persistence of healthy North Carolina wildlife populations, especially in the face of environmental changes that are increasingly transforming and fragmenting landscapes,” said Liz Hillard, Safe Passage co-research lead and senior wildlife biologist at Wildlands Network, a member of the coalition.  

All appropriated funds will help leverage unprecedented federal resources and could help complete projects currently underway. In the Pigeon River Gorge, one such project, along I-40 at Exit 7 near Harmon Den, has seen progress recently with the installation of wildlife benches and cattle guards to deter wildlife from making dangerous crossings into traffic. But critically important fencing to funnel wildlife under the highway has not yet been installed due to lack of funding.

Earlier this year, members of the Safe Passage Fund Coalition issued an action alert to their supporters to urge N.C. Governor Roy Cooper to allocate funding to protect wildlife from roadway collisions, citing President Joe Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which included $350 million for wildlife crossing construction over and under roadways. 

“Protecting wildlife from roadway collisions is critical for infrastructure, the safety of motorists, natural ecosystems, and maintaining a positive image for North Carolina,” said Tim Gestwicki, CEO of North Carolina Wildlife Federation and chair of Safe Passage Fund Coalition’s Steering Committee. “As roadway construction creates new barriers to long-established wildlife corridors, inevitably animals are increasingly encountering humans and their vehicles. These encounters result in animal and human injuries and fatalities, as well as increased costs for motorists and insurers, and litter our highways with decaying carcasses. Safe Passage Fund Coalition members encourage, and in fact urge North Carolina to join other states across the country to take proactive steps to reduce these wildlife–vehicle collisions.”

Documentary produced by Wildlands Network, NPCA to be featured at Boone Docs film fest

“The Search for Safe Passage,” a short film produced by Wildlands Network and National Parks Conservation Association, is set to make its big screen debut at the Boone Docs Film Festival, held in Boone, North Carolina, on Saturday, Feb. 25. The film, which features interviews with Safe Passage Fund Coalition members Dr. Liz Hillard of Wildlands Network and Jeff Hunter of NCPA, highlights the organizations’ work and research in the Pigeon River Gorge over the last several years.

Organized by the Appalachian Theatre of the High Country, Boone Docs showcases short-form documentary films that celebrate life in and around Appalachia. Each of the selected documentaries range from four to 24 minutes in duration, with “The Search for Safe Passage” coming in at 8 minutes in length.

A synopsis for “The Search for Safe Passage” describes the highway through the Pigeon River Gorge as “treacherous” for those “on four wheels or four legs” alike. “Here, Interstate 40 winds through the steep, forested terrain of the Great Smoky Mountains, allowing cars to drive east to west but preventing wildlife from moving north to south,” the description continues.

The film’s screening at the festival will be followed by a short Q&A session with Hunter, the Southern Appalachian director of National Parks Conservation Association, and Hillard, senior wildlife biologist at Wildlands Network.

Boone Docs Film Festival will be held from 2-6 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 25 at the Appalachian Theatre of the High Country, 559 West King St., Boone, North Carolina.

To watch “The Search for Safe Passage,” click here.