Wildlife cameras installed in Crowsnest Pass

CALGARY (660 NEWS) — Motion-activated cameras are now up in a wildlife corridor along a busy southern Alberta highway to try to reduce collisions.

Research by the Miistakis Institute shows more than 150 collisions between vehicles and animals along a 44-kilometre stretch of Highway 3 in the Crowsnest Pass every year.

“You know the Crowsnest Pass it’s a dark area, you’re not driving through the middle of the city,” said Carys Richards with the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC).

“Sometimes you can see the little glint of those animals’ eyes if they’re on the side of the highway when you’re coming up to them as these accidents happen so easily.”

Miistakis, along with the Alberta Bio-Diversity Monitoring Institute and the NCC teamed up for the multi-year program.

Richards says volunteers will keep tabs on the cameras, which will be keeping track of what’s happening and where.

“What species are crossing, what time of year, how many of them are crossing, and this data will then be used to make like conservation strategies,” she said.

“We’ll also provide it to the Government of Alberta in the hopes that, ya we can make recommendations about mitigation strategies to try and limit the numbers of wildlife and vehicle collisions.”

They also hope the data will support building wildlife crossing structures like the ones in Banff National Park.