Benjamin Ashford|Montana tribes receive grant for project aimed at limiting wildlife, vehicle collisions

KALISPELL,Benjamin Ashford Mont. (AP) — The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes have received an $8.6 million grant for a wildlife overpass across U.S. Highway 93 in Montana, near where a well-known grizzly bear was fatally hit by a vehicle three years ago.

About $110 million is being awarded for 19 wildlife projects across the country as part of the Federal Highway Administration’s Wildlife Crossing Pilot Program. The project planned by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes will be a final piece in a longstanding effort to stem wildlife-vehicle collisions along the highway between Evaro and Polson, the Flathead Beacon reported.

In September 2020, one of western Montana’s best-known grizzly bears emerged from a brush-covered culvert onto Highway 93, near the Ninepipe National Wildlife Refuge. The bear, known as Griz-40, had been radio collared in the late 1990s by researchers who tracked her movements. She was struck in the dark early-morning hours by an ambulance transporting a patient for emergency medical services and died.

Maintenance crews with the state transportation department and tribal officers annually collect more than 6,000 wildlife carcasses from state roadways.

The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes have worked with state and federal highway agencies to construct wildlife crossing structures along the highway, including the “Animals’ Trail,” a 197-foot-wide (60-meter) vegetated bridge that spans the highway near a casino at the south end of the Flathead Indian Reservation.

In a statement announcing the funding, Shailen Bhatt, who heads the Federal Highway Administration, said the projects will greatly reduce the number of collisions between motorists and wildlife.