Lynx uses wildlife overpass to cross highway

In this photo from Highwaywilding.org, a lynx is captured by a motion-sensitive camera overlooking a highway overpass. The overpass was built to give wildlife a safe method to cross the Trans-Canada Highway in Banff National Park; since 1996, more than 200,000 wolves, bears and cougars have done so. [Via Fark and The Edmonton Journal]

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autark

these overpasses are extremely prevalent and visible everywhere you go in Banff… I thought they were for bears, but obviously there is lots of other wild life out there. I’d be very surprised if there weren’t a ton of photos like this.
- http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza
  
  There are, but not of lynxes.
  - Brainspore
    
    We’ve found the missing lynx!
FourFeetOfCurl

Nice, kitty.
cookie_b

The story was a lead on CBC Radio Calgary yesterday. They interviewed a Road Ecologist (!!) (Is that a cool job title or what!?) who mentions they have no idea how many Lynx there are in Banff National Park, but it’s not very many (a few dozen at most).

In passing it was mentioned that the highway over/underpasses have reduced the number of Park animals being killed on the TransCanada Highway by around 90%. Now that’s a great spend of Government money!

You can listen to the Homestretch radio interview here: http://www.cbc.ca/homestretch/episode/2012/04/11/lynx-sighting/
- Guest
  
  Especially since the money to build Canada up in the first place largely came out of these animals hides.
suburbanhick

Yeah, well they better live it up while they can. Once Harper gets word that freeloading wildlife is using an overpass built by a Liberal gov’t, he’ll probably close it down too.
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones
  
  No, no, no. You’re looking at something that could be privatized to generate a revenue source for more vital government functions.
  
  Sell the overpasses to private industry, and put up tollgates. The animals could be easily fitted with collars with “EZ Pass” style RFID chips. The tolls could be paid by donations to wildlife preservation groups, or through advertisements shaved into the pelts of the animals.
  - joeposts
    
    That could work, but only if the overpass is moved to Tony Clement’s riding. The gazebos need upgrading.
http://www.zhrodague.net/ Drew from Zhrodague

I have noticed that FARK is far more on-time with news than any of the local Pittsburgh newspaper websites. Sometimes even days before it hits the Post Gazette, I’ve read about it on FARK.
- http://www.mrericsir.com MrEricSir
  
  Fark’s headline for this one is pure win: “Rare photo of Lynx accessing highway-overpass.com”
- IronEdithKidd
  
  Traditional media is a slow, lumbering, bureaucratic beast.
Ito Kagehisa

Route 273 leading out of Newark, Delaware into Maryland has regularly spaced wildlife overpasses. They’ve been there for at least 30 years and have grass growing on them. Local legend has it that the duPont family built them so that the highway would not interfere with fox hunting.
Pasketti

My first thought was to dress up in a bigfoot costume and walk in front of the camera.
- suburbanhick
  
  “Say, can you introduce me to the sasquatch? I like his style!”
http://lectiblog.blogspot.com/ lecti

I didn’t realize lynx was 12ft tall.
- James Holmes
  
  Its like some body dropped a terrifyingly huge feline into a Bob Ross painting….
robdobbs

I’ll be glad when they’re done building them. Work on them can only ever be done during the summer because it’s hella-dangerous in the winter just to drive that road, let-alone work on it, and that causes hours long delays. Mind you, being stuck in the mountains on a sunny day is not all that bad – but it can turn a 10 hour drive into a 14 hour drive.

But they look great. Really beautiful and natural looking, they blend in nicely with the surrounding mountain views. It probably would have been cheaper and easier to make them ugly and strictly utilitarian, but they didn’t. Makes me damn proud to be a Canadian.

And how great is it to find that they’ve been adding webcams and are collecting all this additional data. The government’s not usually this on it.
- Ryan_T_H
  
  The civil service here is actually pretty good. I think one of the most dangerous trends here is talking about our government the same way they do in the USA. The truth is that the departments do great jobs 99% of the time and the occasional scandals are only notable because of the high standards we usually see.
  
  Getting in the habit of associating government with some monstrosity instead of a collection of pretty good public servants is the quickest way I can think of to end up with a monstrosity for real.
  - Liz Stevenson
    
    The only thing I’ve ever noticed that sucked in Canada—amongst a whole lot of win—is the postal service. Complete waste of time to mail anything and hope it gets anywhere. What’s up with that?
    - EvilTerran
      
      Using moose as pack animals doesn’t work so well with post. Especially when they get hungry.
http://twitter.com/ConservationNW Conservation NW

This is a great photo! We’ve run remote camera work for more than a decade, as well as worked to connect and protect the most vital wildlife habitats in the Pacific NW. We can attest that this an amazing capture, not just for the beauty of the photo, but for what it represents–a rare and shy critter making it safely across a highway. It’s connected landscape once more.. Great job, Highway Wilding!
~Barbara
Conservation Northwest
http://twitter.com/BenEhlers Ben Ehlers

Another reason I am a proud taxpayer. Every time I hear about some government boondoggle, I just imagine that all of my tax dollars went towards something awesome like this.

Either that, or Jonathan Goldstein. I’m happy either way.
Palomino

The Autobahn has had wildlife overpasses for years. They are amazing to see, like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
http://twitter.com/Listener43 Listener43

Actually, I think I saw this on the Rick Mercer Report some time ago …. I’m just saying.
quitterjunior

My wife thought Narwhals were made up, like the Chupacabra or the Jackalope, until recently. (I can’t blame her – I would be pretty incredulous if someone told me any animal had a unicorn horn). This is my first time seeing a lynx. If this was tumblr, for example, I would call bs. That is an otherworldly cat. Fresh off the cover of some fantasy novel.