Blue Ridge Country March/April 2021 - 41

WILDLIFE
CROSSINGS

Home,
Dinner,
Family Time:
All on the Other Side
BRIDGET DONALDSON, VIRGINIA TRANSPORTATION RESEARCH COUNCIL

As the world warms, wildlife
populations need to expand
northward. Highways are
formidable barriers to this
movement. A project along I-40
near the Smokies hopes to install
crossing structures to protect
wildlife and people.
By FRANCES FIGART

A female bear looks for the best opportunity to
cross as her cubs surround her at the guardrail
on I-64 in Virginia near the top of Afton
Mountain where the Shenandoah National Park
and the Blue Ridge Parkway meet.

I

t's not unusual for traffic to slow to a
crawl at rush hour along a stretch of
Interstate 40 that snakes through the
Pigeon River Gorge between Asheville, North Carolina, and Knoxville,
Tennessee. But on this summer day,
cars, trucks and everything in between grind to a halt in both directions as
a mother black bear suddenly enters the
roadway leading two small cubs out into
heavy traffic.
Drivers slam on the brakes, and passengers lurch forward, mouths agape in
amazement. In a quintessential " right
place, right time " occurrence, Susan Detwiler has a front-row seat in her vehicle
next to her husband, Kevin Detwiler. She
grabs her cellphone and captures a video
of the bears' safe passage across two lanes
of westbound traffic, over the high Jersey
barrier in the middle, and then across the
two eastbound lanes, finally disappearing

into the brush on the other side of the
road.
But wait! There's a third cub, lagging
behind the others and having trouble
scaling the barrier. " C'mon baby, " coos
Detwiler as the little bear finally topples
over the slick concrete divider and lopes
to safety not far from the Appalachian
Trail and the boundary of Great Smoky
Mountains National Park.
" Unfortunately, that viral 17-second
clip Susan Detwiler captured on August
19, 2018, shows the antithesis of what
normally happens, " says Jeff Hunter, senior program manager for National Parks
Conservation Association (NPCA). " The
fact that traffic miraculously stopped for
these bears was such an anomaly that the
footage became the poster child for our
project, demonstrating the need for wildlife-crossing structures in this perilous section of highway. "

MARCH/APRIL 2021

41



Blue Ridge Country March/April 2021

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