{"id":22620,"date":"2018-05-21T22:46:30","date_gmt":"2018-05-22T04:46:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=22620"},"modified":"2018-05-21T22:46:30","modified_gmt":"2018-05-22T04:46:30","slug":"msu-teams-up-to-redesign-wildlife-crossing-structures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2018\/05\/msu-teams-up-to-redesign-wildlife-crossing-structures\/","title":{"rendered":"MSU teams up to redesign wildlife crossing structures"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ament\"<\/a>

Photo courtesy Neil Hetherington\/WTI<\/p>

Rob Ament, a researcher at the Western Transportation Institute, explains a design for a wildlife crossing structure on May 11 at WTI’s building at Montana State University.<\/p><\/div>\n

BOZEMAN \u2014 An international group of engineers, ecologists and landscape architects joined forces recently at Montana State University for an unusual challenge: designing wildlife crossing structures built from a material that has never been used for that purpose in North America.<\/p>\n

During a workshop hosted by MSU\u2019s\u00a0Western Transportation Institute<\/a>\u00a0on May 10-11, the designers studied topographic maps, exchanged ideas and sketched bridge-like structures that could be fashioned from a high-strength plastic in order to provide elk, grizzly bears and other animals a safe route over roadways.<\/p>\n

\u201cOften, engineers design something and then maybe tack on what the plants and animals need, but here, we\u2019re all together before we even start thinking about the structure,\u201d said WTI researcher Rob Ament.<\/p>\n

The meeting focused on harnessing the potential of fiber-reinforced plastic, a material commonly used in the aerospace and automotive industries and now being applied in large-scale construction in other parts of the world. Because the material is relatively lightweight and inexpensive, Ament said it could make it possible to create and install more crossing structures, which are typically made of concrete or metal. Because the material is also very durable, it could even make it possible to relocate and reuse those crossings if animals change their migration patterns, for example.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause we\u2019re dealing with a new material, it\u2019s fun to see the engineers stimulate ideas for the ecologists,\u201d Ament said.<\/p>\n

Roughly half the 15 participants were visiting from Toronto, where Ryerson University\u2019s\u00a0Ecological Design Lab<\/a>\u00a0has a tradition of collaborating with WTI.

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/p>\n

\u201cBecause WTI is kind of the epicenter of (research on) road ecology, it made sense for us to come here,\u201d said Nina-Marie Lister, director of the Ecological Design Lab and associate professor in Ryerson\u2019s School of Urban and Regional Planning. She and Ament are co-investigators on a three-year grant funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to study integrated approaches to designing landscape connectivity and wildlife mobility.<\/p>\n

WTI researchers have played a leading role<\/a>\u00a0in guiding the development of wildlife crossing structures internationally. Tony Clevenger, a senior research scientist at WTI who attended the workshop, has been a primary consultant on the world\u2019s largest complex of wildlife crossing structures, which consists of tree-covered overpasses and earth-lined culverts along a roughly 51-mile stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway through Banff National Park.<\/p>\n

According to Clevenger\u2019s research, nearly a dozen species of large mammals have used the Banff structures more than 150,000 times, and the mortality rates for large carnivores such as grizzly bears are now 50 to 100 percent lower where the crossings have been installed.<\/p>\n

On May 11, as the two design teams prepared to present their prototypes for wildlife crossings in Hyalite Canyon and at Bozeman Pass on Interstate 90, Lister said she was looking forward to seeing the creativity generated by interdisciplinary conversation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think we can achieve greater economy of scale and innovation if we work together,\u201d Lister said.<\/p>\n

WTI\u2019s executive director, Steve Albert, commented that the structures could possibly also be used to provide safe and easy crossing for pedestrians in a municipal setting.<\/p>\n

Matt Bell, who is working toward a master\u2019s in civil engineering in MSU\u2019s\u00a0Norm Asbjornson College of Engineering<\/a>, studied the other team\u2019s design on the whiteboard and commented that \u201creduced labor cost is one thing they\u2019re looking at, so I like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The designs included unique details such as pre-cast indentations \u2014 like those in an egg carton \u2014 that could help the overlaid soil retain moisture, supporting the growth of grassy cover. All of the hypothetical structures shared in the basic goal of making it as easy as possible to give wild creatures options for moving across the landscape without risking deadly collision with vehicles.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we simply look at the safety benefits (to motorists), it makes sense,\u201d said Jerry Stephens, who was taking a break from his normal duties as head of MSU\u2019s\u00a0Department of Civil Engineering<\/a>\u00a0to lend his expertise to the design challenge.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are something we should be looking at much more,\u201d Stephens said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BOZEMAN \u2014 An international group of engineers, ecologists and landscape architects joined forces recently at Montana State University for an unusual challenge: designing wildlife crossing structures built from a material that has never been used for that purpose in North America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":22621,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[1065,6985,6984],"class_list":["post-22620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-montana-state-university","tag-wildlife-crossings","tag-wildlife-transportation-institute","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22620"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22626,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22620\/revisions\/22626"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}