(sound of loud trucks)
Route 2 is just two lanes, but that doesn’t stop trucks from barreling through as they travel east-west between Maine and Vermont.
When Mark Elbroch travels the rural route, on the other hand, he takes his time.
Elbroch has been driving up and down 22 miles of route 2 and 6 miles of route 115 at 10 miles an hour, methodically searching for tracks of wildlife.
"So this is spot where a moose crossed a road…"
Elbroch is a professional animal tracker with the company Ichneumon Wildlife Services.
Standing just west of the Randolph fire station, he says this particular spot is one of the most heavily used wildlife crossings on route 2.
"We are at a spot where as you can see we have mixed forest types, a lot of cover from softwood, it’s a very narrow point of Route 2, if you were an animal and you were trying to hide as you were trying to cross the road it’s a wonderful spot because you have great cover on both sides and it’s the shortest distance to get to cover on the other side…plus you have natural riparian areas…(trucks barreling by)…whew! This is what we deal with!"
He points to a set of moose prints in the snow.
"See how the moose approached the road, he actually turned away, he was going to cross right where we parked and turned away and cut around and decided this was a better spot than the fire station where we parked (RK: "Than just 50 ft. down the road?") yeah, you can see the difference though…residential, wider expanse, not as forested, different…ready to run?"
Like moose making a run for it, we quickly cross route 2 and drop down into the wooded wetland.
(sound of walking in the snow)
Stomping through the rain, in wet snow, the story of this one moose becomes even clearer.
"This is the same moose that crossed the road, coming through, this is starting to be the point you can really hear road movement, and this is where he starts to zig zag, he’s had a nice straight trail coming across, indecision, there’s indecision, you see the tracks here, the regular pattern is diagonal, and here there’s extra tracks, and he starts stopping, listening, stopping, listening, making decisions, making decisions …all about road crossings."
It has been all about road crossing for Elbroch and his fellow trackers.
Since December, he and his colleagues have counted over 4,000 instances of animals interacting with the road—either exiting, entering, crossing, or walking along side it.
They have studied the behavior of 16 animals including bobcats, lynx, moose, martens, and otters.
They’ve sited over 1,000 red fox crossings, nearly 460 coyote crossings, and over 680 deer.
Elbroch even discovered tracks of the endangered and rarely seen Canada lynx.
Sitting in doors at the Waterwheel restaurant in Jefferson, Elbroch says he part of his task is trying to understand the animals he is studying.
"You really get stories and that’s part of the experience stories that are connected with these road crossings, these animals have a life, we are trying to figure out what are they doing up on the hill over there and why are they crossing…that age old question…why are they crossing the road?"
Some animals, especially small ones like the mink, prefer to safely cross under the roads through culverts.
Elbroch says others haven’t quite figured out what the safest method is.
"For bobcats, cougars, lynx, it’s a huge issue, they don’t want to cross and when they do they are often killed, they are not very good at deciding when to cross."
Humans might not be able to make bobcats better road crossers but they might be able to build roads that make the crossings safer.
Sarah Barnum says first you have to know why the animals are crossing.
Barnum is the vice president for conservation at the New Hampshire Audubon Society, the organization sponsoring the research.
"It could be that there’s good resources on either side of road, just hey I’m going from this great place where there’s food to this great place where there’s food and I have to cross there, or there could be pathways they’re following, just like humans, animals are a little bit lazy or they want to follow area they know so a ridgeline or a valley or even a side road."
But Barnum says there’s not much research out there to corroborate these theories.
She says she hopes this study will help do that.
"The thing about conventional wisdom is that it’s useful but when you ask DOT to build an animal overpass that costs 2 million dollars they want something a little more than conventional wisdom they want to know its really going to work, so I’m excited about the idea of confirming conventional wisdom if that’s something we can do."
In fact, the New Hampshire Department of Transportation was a major catalyst for this study.
DOT is preparing to upgrade route 2.
In response, some local residents expressed concern over how the upgrade would affect wildlife.
Also, there is currently one particularly dangerous intersection at routes 115 and 2 in Jefferson.
Apparently that's where a lot of cars have hit a lot of mooses.
Sarah Barnum says minimizing these unwelcome encounters sometimes involves major engineering projects…like building multi-million dollar animal overpasses.
But she says they don’t always have to be so complitcated.
"Working with engineers at DOT, some want to do the same old thing, but some of them get so excited, its not just a problem of getting the people safely but how do we get the animals, they come up with the most unique solutions and they get really turned on by these things because its like an extra dimension to their usual job, when you find the road engineer who is into this thing you can do some really great stuff."
Like, for example, expanding already existing underpasses to accommodate bigger animals.
DOT has not indicated how they will incorporate the research into the route 2 project.
The department is set to contribute 15,000 dollars to the study.
Fish and Game is contributing 45,000 dollars and the Merck Family Foundation 30,000.
Kevin Nyhan is the senior environmental manager at the state Department of Transportation.
He says while all road projects are different, he thinks this study will be an important tool in helping DOT design more animal friendly across the state.
"We recognize that we are sharing the landscape with animals but in terms of design standpoint it’s something DOT is taking into consideration more and more with each project as we learn more and more information, that will be one of great benefits of this study is that we will have more tools in terms of what wildlife is doing…hopefully for this project as well as future project based on the landscape features that we find that drive animals through the landscape."
Tracker Mark Elbroch plans to wrap up his work in May or June.
He hopes to see some signs of bear activity any day now.
Despite his countless hours of research, Elbroch admits that when it comes down to it, he believes the animals he is tracking are crossing the road for the exact same reason as the chicken.
"It’s a pretty simple answer, it really is to get to the other side…"
For NHPR news, I’m RK.
Photo by Flickr.com user djwudi. Used through a Creative Commons license.
