What happens when the elk cross the road?

The young driver was not hurt. At least not physically. She had only looked down for a second as her check engine light came on and, in that moment, her Jeep hit the elk. Hitting the 600-pound animal at 70 miles per hour, the light – and the animal's life – flickered out.

Last year, when two of my co-workers got word of this accident, they printed off a Vehicle-Killed Wildlife Salvage Permit from the Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks website, and within 30 minutes from impact, the three of us were there at the scene, staring at the cow in the borrow ditch where she'd stumbled to die. She was large and healthy for March 25. It had been an erratic winter with late heavy snows, and she had made it through. Light thermals rose in the blue sky, and the sun's warmth near the pavement had greened the first grass. This very elk had likely passed through this very place, for years, to glean the new growth.

Elk in Montana's Swan Valley migrate up and down the mountains, following snowmelt to summer in subalpine meadows, and snowfall to winter in the valley bottom. As spring arrives, cow elk form loose herds, following paths learned from their mothers who followed paths learned from their mothers. Bisecting foraging habitats to the east and west, Highway 83 blocks a multi-generation journey that some elk never complete.

As we began processing the animal, that was the part that was painful. Not that she died, but that she died that way. With road rash that sheared off her two-layered winter coat, weeks before it would naturally shed. With shinbone shards that crunched as we heaved her steaming body into the pickup. And most of all, with the young male fetus we found within her – still hairless, still linked with umbilical cord, still forming hooves that were yellow and soft as butter. Still. It was hard enough to see a vehicle deny a worthy life. It was harder to see a vehicle deny a birth, one that could've come the first week of June.

But of course, this collision wasn't the first and won't be the last. A 2018 report from the State Farm Insurance Company ranked Montana second in the United States for highest rates of statewide wildlife collision, with 1 in 57 people killing deer with cars. Vehicle-wildlife collisions kill people too, about 200 of us nationwide, every year. And as a frequent bike commuter who's familiar with the palpable whoosh of a log truck rolling by, I've gathered plenty of evidence that deer and elk aren't the only victims. Bears, birds, beavers, toads, squirrels, snakes, turtles, dragonflies, butterflies...are also on this endless list.

Although I'm collision-free so far, I know I'm responsible. These collisions are part of the moral, ecological and economic price I pay for living a road-centric life in a wild place. But I try my best to lower these costs by wearing a seat belt, heeding signs, slowing the heck down, and most of all: by paying attention. At Swan Valley Connections, I love nothing more than working with naturalists who take their curiosities everywhere, including the driver's seat, asking questions like: Whose habitat am I driving through? Who might be feeding or moving nearby? What's happening seasonally and what's going on with the weather?

And while collisions like this one seem helpless, I find promise in the growing, prevention-based focus on wildlife habitat connectivity and the diversity of programs now working to document and reduce this problem. I feel especially fortunate to live in a state with a Vehicle-Killed Roadside Salvage Program, because nothing could've helped me process a sad situation better than honoring the lives of those two elk with friends. We found hope in preventing further collisions with scavengers like bears, coyotes and eagles, and in sharing a quarter with the young driver and her grandfather, who will never see elk the same way again. What happens when the elk crosses the road is not inevitable. It is a question, asked each time we get behind the wheel.