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Thursday, September 25, 2003

Plan Gets Wildlife Across I-40

By Tania Soussan
Journal Staff Writer
    The term "wildlife crossing" could take on new meaning in the East Mountains if conservationists have their way.
    An ambitious plan described Tuesday would provide bears, deer and other animals with safe passage across Interstate 40 in Tijeras Canyon.
    The canyon between the Sandia and Manzano mountains is one of five priority areas identified in the proposal to create a wildlife corridor from Mexico to the Yukon.
    Officials of the Wildlands Project outlined details Tuesday of what until now has been a philosophical plan to link prime wildlife habitat along the 4,000-mile "spine of the continent" from northern Mexico up through the Rocky Mountains and into western Canada.
    "We call this the 100-year vision," said Jen Clanahan, Rocky Mountain director for the Wildlands Project. "It's the long-term approach."
    The New Mexico Game and Fish Department and Sandia Mountain BearWatch are working with the Wildlands Project on Tijeras Canyon.
    They want to build special underpasses or overpasses to allow animals to safely cross I-40 as they travel between the Sandias and Manzanos. They also have suggested fencing be added to guide wildlife to the crossings.
    "We're seeing dead bears along the freeway and it seems to be increasing," said BearWatch founder Jan Hayes, adding that male bears travel 50 or 60 miles to mate and that bears need larger territories to survive during drought.
    The New Mexico Department of Transportation is considering a feasibility study for the project, said environmental program manager Steve Reed.
    "Reconnecting wildlife habitats that have been fragmented by human development is one of the greatest challenges in wildlife conservation that we are faced with today," said Mark Watson, a Game and Fish habitat specialist.
    Reed said a project as ambitious as the Tijeras Canyon proposal will be expensive and will require partnerships.
    Beverly deGruyter, wildlife biologist for the Sandia and Mountainair ranger districts of the Cibola National Forest, said the Forest Service will be a partner in the effort but won't be driving it.
    "It will take a long time," deGruyter said. "There has to be an environmental assessment, then the process of finding funding and the process of involving the public. A lot of players will have to be involved."
    Whether the eventual crossing is an underpass or an overpass, deGruyter said, it would make the most sense to link Forest Service land on either side of the freeway.
    "I've thought about where it would make sense to me," she said. "Just west of Carlito Spring and east of Carnuel is a logical place. There's about a two-mile stretch in there."
    Commuting from Albuquerque to Tijeras each day, deGruyter has seen the need for a safe wildlife crossing firsthand.
    "One of the things I look at every day is how do wildlife get across this road," she said. "I've picked up mountain lions, and seen bears killed on that highway, so it's important that we're starting to look at this. It is a serious problem."
    Clanahan had no estimates for the cost of the proposed Tijeras Canyon project or the entire Wildlands Project plan.
    The Sandias and Manzanos themselves are an important link between the habitat in the Gila National Forest and the San Juan and Rio Grande national forests in southern Colorado— the kinds of "megalinkages" the Wildlands Project advocates.
    Conservation biologists have found that protecting isolated pockets of habitat— a national park here and wilderness area there— is not working to sustain wildlife, Clanahan said.
    The animals need room to roam and to find food and mates, she said.
    The four other priority areas identified in the plan are Crowsnest Pass near the border of Montana and Canada, the Powder Rim of south-central Wyoming, Vail Pass in Colorado and the borderlands between Mexico and Arizona and New Mexico.
    Border fencing and other security measures designed to stem illegal immigration have become a major threat to wildlife moving between biologically rich Chihuahua, Mexico and the "Sky Islands" mountain areas of southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona, according to the plan.
    Clanahan said the next step will be to talk with local people in each of the priority areas and form partnerships.
    "It's going to take a network of people to protect this network of land," she said.