Legacy Parkway taking a heavy toll on critters
There was also one mink, likely one of the 6,000 that escaped Sept. 21 when an Animal Liberation Front "soldier" broke into a Kaysville mink farm and released the animals.
And nearly as soon as Utah Department of Natural Resources employees clean up the animals, more roadkill appears.
The Utah Department of Transportation doesn't keep track of how many animals are hit on the parkway, which opened Sept. 13, but it seems the raccoons have a thing or two to learn about traffic.
After all, it's part of what happens when roads bisect nature.
But here's the rub: Raccoons aren't native to Davis County.
Rich Hansen, manager of the Farmington Bay Waterfowl Management Area, said raccoons aren't native to Utah and biologists noted their arrival in the late 1970s. Raccoons are considered predators to the thousands of ducks, grebes and other waterfowl in the area, sometimes ravaging a nesting colony for what seems like the sport of it.
Each year, Hansen's employees trap 200 to 400 raccoons as a means of predator control. Skunks, foxes and feral cats also prey upon waterfowl, but raccoons dominate the local ecosystem.
Before the 1970s, the birds mostly had to worry about skunks, so they built their nests on islands to avoid that problem.
But raccoons have no worries about swimming up to a half mile to an island to feast on a veritable fowl buffet.
"Coons will just go from nest to nest and pluck all the eggs out," Hansen said.
But it's not just shorebirds who are victims, said Lynn de Freitas, executive director of Friends of Great Salt Lake. Songbirds fall prey, as well.
"(Raccoons) are very indiscriminate with their dietary requirements," de Freitas said, adding that it behooves local residents to make sure pet food and garbage aren't left outside. Raccoons are attracted by those things, she said.
But predator control seems to pay off, Hansen said.
Before 2003, when control measures began, the duck census revealed seven broods, or clutches of eggs that typically yield between five and 15 ducklings, Hansen said. In 2005, the duck census found 154 broods.
It's like giving the ducks a fighting chance in an area known worldwide for its nesting waterfowl and migratory birds.
So the Legacy Parkway might actually be helping Hansen's work, though it's not a prescribed wildlife management practice.
Phil Douglass, conservation outreach manager for Division of Wildlife Services' northern region, said predator control is implemented when bird populations fall to certain levels.
"I don't think vehicles running over raccoons is a good thing at any time," Douglass said, adding that there's been a marked increase of raccoons getting hit on roadways throughout northern Utah, not just the Legacy Parkway, which is the raccoons' newest asphalt nemesis.
"I think it's just because it's something new," he said. "I think that they'll probably eventually wise up to that."
E-mail: jdougherty@desnews.com
Recent comments
What surprises me is that an invasive non-native, imported species…
elsie | Sept. 29, 2008 at 9:44 p.m.
Way to try to cover up your stupid road. It was a bad idea to put…
Government Cover Up | Sept. 29, 2008 at 6:35 p.m.
too. They are not cute, cuddley critters. They are vicious and…
I've had racoons in my chimney | Sept. 29, 2008 at 6:10 p.m.
