![]() Hilke pointed out a flat area halfway down the slope that was designed specifically for wildlife travel, especially large mammals. So in 2013, as part of a repaving project on Route 2, VTrans worked with Fish and Wildlife to make changes to the underpasses to allow wildlife to cross safely beneath the three bridges. These major roads, above the Little River and its confluence with the larger Winooski, are known barriers to wildlife movement between the Mount Mansfield and Camel’s Hump State Forests, proven in no small part by the regular presence of dead animals on the highway and by game camera photos. Hilke and Brady were checking up on a wildlife project in Waterbury they’d been working on together. Not a place you’d normally expect to find two biologists. To their right, traffic whizzed by on Route 2 over another bridge. ![]() To their left, cars and trucks rumbled over two tall bridges for Interstate 89’s north and southbound lanes. The men were scanning a valley from the crest of a steep slope. Jens Hilke, a conservation planning biologist with the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, stood beside his colleague, James Brady, a biologist with the Vermont Agency of Transportation (VTrans), who wore a neon-yellow jacket. When animals are forced to cross roadways, their lives are not the only ones in danger.
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