The Land of Enchantment has a fresh opportunity in the upcoming 2025 legislative session to devote funds to keep drivers and wildlife safe
Driven by instinct and shaped by their environment, big game such as deer, elk, and pronghorn follow paths sometimes invisible to the human eye—passages deeply set in the landscape and etched in evolutionary memory—but often noticed by hunters. The need for animals to move is immutable, as species of every kind undertake journeys for habitat, food, and reproduction.
In New Mexico, as in other places across the West, migration corridors for big game and other animals alike are increasingly threatened. Poorly sited human infrastructure, like energy and housing development, can degrade habitat and disrupt wildlife movement in ways difficult to mitigate.
Roads are particularly troublesome. If you’ve ever driven the highways abutting forests and grasslands around New Mexico, you’ve likely seen evidence of this struggle in the remains of animals lying in broken piles beside the road.
Near where my wife and I live in northern New Mexico, motorists are likely to see a dead deer alongside Highway 550 on their way south to explore the San Pedro Parks Wilderness, and two more on their way home along the same road. Regular travelers along US-180 and NM-90 near Silver City, US-70 out of Ruidiso and the Sacramento Mountains, and I-25 over Glorieta Pass are likely to report similar sights: a regular occurrence of dead animals that attempted to cross a busy roadway.
On average, there are around 1,200 wildlife-vehicle collisions reported in New Mexico every year, costing about $20 million in vehicle damage, emergency response, and healthcare expenses. And that doesn’t include the incalculable damage to wildlife populations and hunter opportunity.
You Can’t Teach a Deer to Use a Crosswalk, But You Can Build a Bridge
Fortunately for wildlife, and the safety of New Mexico drivers, the collision hotspots mentioned above (and others like them) were identified in the state’s Wildlife Corridors Action Plan. Finalized in 2022, the plan provides comprehensive guidance to the New Mexico Department of Transportation and the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish to conserve areas important for wildlife movement and to develop road-crossing structures designed to help animals safely cross heavily trafficked highways. In turn, crossing structures also protect the public from dangerous, sometimes deadly, collisions with wildlife.
We don’t need to look far to see how beneficial investments in wildlife-crossing structures can be. Nearby states like Colorado and Utah have seen success in similar solutions. In Utah, the construction of two underpasses beneath I-15 saw a 98.5 percent reduction in deer mortalities for that corridor, and in Colorado, wildlife crossings above and below State Highway 9 have reduced collisions by 90 percent over five years.
We also have evidence of crossing infrastructure working right here at home. Near where I live in Aztec, the state installed three wildlife crossing culverts in 2004, primarily to encourage mule deer to travel below US 550. Between 2017 and 2020, camera monitoring conducted by AZGFD and NMDOT documented more than 6,000 successful mule deer crossings. That’s 6,000 fewer opportunities for a problem on the roadway above.
No Money, More Problems
Incredible improvements like those mentioned above are possible for New Mexico’s wildlife and drivers, but only if we’re willing to pay for them. For just one of the collision hotspots (US 550 north of Cuba), the cost to develop all the recommended infrastructure—multiple crossing structures, fencing, and additional signage for drivers—is estimated to be $45 million. Statewide, an estimated $388 million is needed to address the eleven priority areas identified by NMDOT.
While modest investments have been made in recent years to implement the state’s action plan ($5 million in 2024), New Mexico has a fresh opportunity in the upcoming 2025 legislative session to more adequately devote funds to these critical, life-saving solutions. With the allocation of additional funding, the state can also leverage federal dollars from grants such as the Wildlife Crossings Pilot Program, which is designed to assist states in efforts to mitigate the more than 1 million wildlife-vehicle collisions that take place across the country every year. Leveraging federal money while the opportunity exists will be crucial if we’re to come close to meeting the large estimates in New Mexico’s state plan.
Absent robust funding, we’ll continue to see animals hitting these proverbial roadblocks around the state in alarming numbers, especially as new pressures on habitat limit the ability for wildlife to move freely. For hunters, investments in crossings infrastructure makes good sense, both in keeping us safer on the way to our hunt and in conserving the health of herds we’d like to enjoy well into the future.
As we’re in the middle of busy summer travel and approaching both hunting season and the next legislative session, sign up so you can stay tuned for ways to assist TRCP and our partners in securing substantive funding of the New Mexico Wildlife Corridors Action Plan.
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