 |
| Grand Teton mother & cubs, AP |
Even in areas set aside for their protection and enjoyment by visitors, animals are suffering increasingly fatal encounters with vehicles. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) released road-kill records from Yellowstone, Yosemite and Grand Teton national parks, the most visited US parks in the nation. The records show wild animals are dying by the hundreds in collisions with visitors' cars, yet the National Park Service does not have a policy to address the problem. Individual parks are left to their own devices when collisions, which are usually fatal for the animal, occur. Yellowstone National Park takes no preventive measures whatsoever. The Park is famous for its grizzly bears and many tourists travel there in the hopes of seeing the impressive creatures. The average number of grizzly bear deaths from vehicle collisions has doubled in the decade since 2000. Collisions with bison and black bears has increased 50% during the same period. Five Yellowstone wolves were killed in 2011 alone.
Grand Teton National Park tracks vehicle-wildlife collisions for twenty-four species as well as the circumstances in each collision. Park officials found a quarter of the collisions involved locals commuting through the park. Grand Teton implemented and tested mitigation measures including reducing speed limits at night. Yosemite began erecting red signs where a bear was killed in a collision to raise consciousness of the problem. Data collected at Grand Teton show collisions increase with increases in traffic density. Yellowstone Park, the busiest park in America, has done nothing to mitigate wildlife deaths. PEER's director Jeff Ruch called the increasing number of wildlife deaths due to vehicle collisions in national parks, "a conservation failure". The organization is developing a best practices guide for park superintendents and wildlife managers that details techniques which have successfully reduced road-kills.
