In western Waterbury, two forested blocks along the spine of the Green Mountains — one 72,000 acres, and the other 54,000 acres — are separated by the busiest stretch of highway in Vermont.
North and south of the roads, the forests are home to deer, moose, bear, mink, fish and many more species.
“Really, any species — the vast majority of species in Vermont — are present in this area,” said Jens Hawkins-Hilke, conservation planner with the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department.
A study about the roadways — Route 2 and Interstate 89 — conducted by Vermont Agency of Transportation (VTrans) and Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department, confirmed what members of both groups suspected. The roads were splitting a major wildlife movement area along the spine of the Green Mountains into two parts, posing risks to both wildlife and people driving when animals attempted to cross.
“The conclusion of that study was, should you ever run into buckets of money, here are a couple of sites that you should consider for reconnecting the spine of the Green Mountains,” said Chris Slesar, environmental resources coordinator at VTrans.
Recently, Vermont officials learned they would receive at least one bucket of money to kick-start the design phase of such a project.
The Biden Administration announced Tuesday that Vermont would receive $1.6 million from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration to begin reconnecting the two forest areas.
The money will fund only the design phase of the project. If it moves forward, the project would involve converting a long, skinny culvert that runs underneath both Route 2 and the north and southbound lanes of I-89 into an underpass. Wildlife could move underneath the roadways freely.
The existing culvert is 5 feet wide and 390 feet long, according to Slesar, and it ineffectively channels a 20-foot-wide tributary to the Winooski River. Hawkins-Hilke described how water can shoot out of the downstream end of the culvert during wet times.
“It shoots water straight out like a fire hose,” he said. “We can see the scarring on the ground 20, 30, 40 feet away from the end of the culvert.”
The department has set cameras up to monitor wildlife in the area. The cameras have only ever recorded one mink passing through the culvert.
“There’s a pinhole of light at the end of it,” Hawkins-Hilke said. “The vast majority of species won’t go through that.”
In the proposed project, the tributary would run freely through the valley below the roadways, allowing fish to move more easily. Wildlife could walk alongside the river, or along an earthen pathway built higher on the slope that will accommodate more types of wildlife.
Slesar, with VTrans, expects the final project to be expensive. It would involve excavating through a large amount of fill that currently sits between the problematic culvert and the roadways. But the agency is “committed to this project,” he said.
Out of 60 applicants, Vermont is one of 17 states to receive some of a $110 million that the federal government has allocated to improving wildlife-vehicle collisions. Strategies that could be funded include constructing wildlife crossings over and below busy roads, adding fencing, and buying tracking and mapping tools, and more. Over five years, the federal government plans to distribute a total of $350 million, and Vermont plans to apply to the second round of funding to move forward with the project, Slesar said.
“The Federal Highway Administration has skin in the game already,” he said. “They’ve committed $1.62 million for this. So, you know, we don’t want to count our chickens, but we’re fairly confident that this project has traction.”
Connecting the two wildlife areas could have impacts beyond direct safety improvements to animals and passengers, Hawkins-Hilke said. The project is also about climate resilience and climate adaptation, he said.
Entire populations are adjusting their ranges of movement in response to climate change by an average of a mile per year, and Vermont is “the crossroads of connectivity across the entire north, Northeast U.S. and southern Canada,” he said. The northern Appalachian mountains are connected to the Green Mountains, too.
“So, wildlife are adjusting their range in the face of climate change, and they’re moving up the Appalachians,” Hawkins-Hilke said. “(Interstate) 89 is one of the most significant barriers along the Greens. And so, we’re not just replacing one bridge, we’re allowing for plant and animal movement across this whole Green Mountain chain and up into the mountains of Quebec, and down in the Taconics in Massachusetts, and so forth.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified which protected area encompasses the forested blocks to be connected by the wildlife crossing.
