Concrete road barriers (CRB’s) may be a significant factor in badger highway mortality. Numerous reports have documented badgers running down the roadside trying to exit the highway surface and unable to do so because of the high concrete barriers (Weir and Hoodicoff 2002). Whereas badgers are capable of climbing barriers, their natural instincts when threatened are to dig, which they cannot do on paved roads. Allowing badgers to exit the road surface through holes in the CRB may be one way to help reduce road mortality.

Badger Highway Mitigation Project

With funding from Habitat Conservation Trust Fund, the Province of BC has started a project to hopefully reduce the roadkill of badgers in the Thompson region. The primary objective of this project is to replace concrete road barriers in selected sections of highway in the Thompson Valley with permeable road barriers. Working with Argo Road Maintenance (Thompson), we have replaced 4 barriers along one 2 km long stretch of solid barrier on the TransCanada highway (photos below). The replacement barriers have openings in the bottom that are large enough for badgers to exit the highway surface. We hope to continue to monitor the effectiveness of this approach in reducing badger mortalities through continued monitoring of these replacement sites.

The desired outcome of the project is to reduce highway mortality rates for badgers in this region. Reducing highway mortality by as much as 50% of the reported figures represents a total of 7% of the current provincial population estimate.

We thank Argo Road Maintenance for their assistance and cooperation with this project.

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Copyright © 2011 jeffersonii Badger Recovery Team
Last modified: 27/05/11