In spite of the fact that taxpayer dollars were spent on studies to determine where wildlife crossed Hwy 20 in Island Park with recommended areas for wildlife overpass placement in the 2016 Cramer report, and an overwhelming rejection of overpasses by a Fremont County advisory vote in 2018, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) is wasting more money to study the issue.
In a "federal-state" project, $25,000 is being spent, or rather wasted, "to identify road-killed animals in a major wildlife migration corridor to determine collision hotspots and potential locations for wildlife crossing structures." All of this was done in separate studies from 2014 to 2016. In fact, Idaho Fish & Game (IDFG) has a wildlife collision database online, for the whole state! The focus area for this study is U.S. Highway 20 and State Highway 87, which is the area Yellowstone to Yukon (Y2Y) desperately wants for their connectivity agenda. But IDFG has the same objective having already completed their linkage mapping in Idaho. The final Environmental Assessment draft is still not complete. Is this another desperate attempt by the federal and state governments to try and get their way? Where did that $25,000 come from? Did Y2Y assist with that funding, or was it just further waste of tax dollars? This is outrageous, the citizens of Fremont County have spoken and no further studies are going to justify destroying Island Park with overpasses. It is time the government wakes up to reality.
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Making Sense of It All
This blog will help you make sense out of all the information on the website, how it affects IP, our history, and how efforts continue to put IP into various forms of conservation status. Archives
May 2023
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