The Colorado Corridors Project in June captured its first photo of a wolf on Vail Pass.

The photo features the wolf staring directly into the camera and was taken by a remote-triggered camera on the north side of East Vail pass.

The photo tracks with information provided in Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s June activity map detailing the collared wolves’ movements across the state. In June, the map showed the wolves were moving deeper into Eagle and Summit counties.

The monthly maps track the wolves, which were reintroduced in December, using Colorado watershed boundaries. The map from May 21 through June 25 showed the wolves entering watersheds in northwestern Eagle County and southern Summit County near Copper Mountain. 

Colorado Corridors Project is a volunteer-driven initiative between Rocky Mountain Wild and the Denver Zoo created to track wildlife movements near proposed wildlife crossings. It was created nine years ago to “engage volunteers in wildlife monitoring on East Vail Pass,” said Paige Singer, a conservation ecologist with Rocky Mountain Wild.

The photo from Colorado Corridors Project makes wolves the 13th carnivore that the initiative has captured on its cameras, and the first reintroduced wolf in the project’s study area, Singer confirmed.

The cameras — which are installed, monitored and tracked by volunteers — are triggered to take a photograph when motion is detected. 

“They can capture images at any time, day or night. We set up the cameras in late spring and take them down in the fall, moving them to a new location every few weeks throughout the field season,” Singer said.

The remote-triggered cameras along Vail Pass align with a project on the eastern side of the pass to create three wildlife crossing structures.

“The wildlife data collected through this project will be used to both ensure the wildlife crossing structures recommended for East Vail Pass are designed so all wildlife in the area can use them as well as assess the effectiveness of the wildlife crossing structures once they are built by comparing data collected before and after construction,” Singer added.

Creating safe passages for wildlife on Vail Pass

Julia Kintsch, representing the Summit County Safe Passages Initiative as the group’s board chair, shared an update on the wildlife passages at the Vail Town Council’s Tuesday meeting. 

Kintsch shared that this section of East Vail Pass has been identified as a “priority area” for reducing collisions by multiple state agencies and regional studies for over 20 years.

“The time is now for this particular project; it’s on the cusp,” Kintsch said. “It’s been on the drawing board for over 20 years and we are in a position where we have momentum that we’ve never had before and we have a groundswell of support and we have these funding opportunities.”

The site has long been identified due to the high volume of vehicular traffic, the economic importance of the I-70 corridor and the presence of many wildlife species. It sees more than 22,000 cars a day on average, Kintsch reported.

“Wildlife vehicle collisions are actually the third-leading cause of reported crashes on this stretch of East Vail pass, between Copper Mountain and the top of the pass,” Kintsch said.

While there’s an average of 5.6 wildlife-vehicle collisions reported to law enforcement on this stretch each year, Kintsch said conservative estimates place the actual rate two to four times higher, with some collisions not reported to law enforcement.

In addition to the recently spotted wolf, Kintsch shared that the Colorado Corridors Project has sighted herds of elk, moose, deer, bighorn sheep and other carnivore species including the Canada lynx.

“The Colorado Rockies represent the southern extent for the federally-threatened Canada Lynx and East Vail pass is home to the only known breeding population of the lynx outside of the southwest part of the state where there were reintroduced,” Kintsch shared. 

The I-70 East Vail Pass Wildlife Crossings project proposes the creation of three safe wildlife passages: an overpass at mile marker 192.3, an underpass at mile marker 193 and another underpass at mile marker 193.5.

In creating these new passages, building off existing infrastructure and adding wildlife fencing, the project creates “a comprehensive mitigation system that would both keep wildlife out of the line of traffic and make the road safer for drivers as well as providing these safe passages so animals can move across both the eastbound and the westbound lanes of the interstate,” Kintsch said.

Since 2022, the Colorado Department of Transportation has assumed leadership on the project, with the department’s executive management showing “full support” for it,” Kintsch shared.

After undergoing a feasibility study as well as initiating the project’s design and environmental review, the project is well positioned for construction to start in 2026, and for grant funding to help get it across the finish line, Kintsch noted.

Last year, construction costs were estimated at $32 million, Kintsch reported. The project has already secured funding through grants from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the Colorado Safe Passages Fund. Looking ahead, it has an opportunity to get significant funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, through its Wildlife Crossings Pilot Program. This award would also trigger a $6.4 million grant from the state’s cash fund for bipartisan infrastructure law projects.

However, before it can seek funding from this federal grant program, it needs to raise $1 million to complete the design project, Kintsch said.

“This is a great confluence of all these events and a really incredible opportunity to get this project, that’s been on the conceptual for so long, to get it across the finish line,” she added.

This story is from VailDaily.com