Yay- my home state gets its first wildlife overpass! Montana is one of my all-time favorite places. It's beautiful. The wide-open landscapes, the big sky, the rivers, the mountains, and the wildlife are incredible. Knowing that you are in a place where the suite of endemic "charismatic megafauna"- wolves, lions, grizzly bears, black bears, moose, elk, bison, pronghorn- is intact, is awesome.
Most other states in the lower 48 have already lost a number of these species. In many places they were extirpated (a polite term for local extinctions caused by over-hunting and trapping when the country was settled --often spurred by management agencies offering a bounty). But Montana has it all, now to keep it that way- and provide safer highways for people- they'll be building wildlife crossings including a huge wildlife overpass over I-93 near Evaro. This will help animals cross highways safely and provide a more permeable landscape, a landscape in which connected wildlife populations can thrive, roaming and reproducing freely and avoiding the perils facing small, local populations trapped in isolated habitats. yippee!
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