The following are summaries of the classroom presentations featured at the workshop. PDF versions of the PowerPoint slides for each speaker are provided where available. If you have any difficulty downloading the PDF files, please contact CTE.

• Welcome and Logistics
  Monique DiGiorgio, Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project
  Lonnie Hendrix, Arizona DOT
  
  
• A Collaborative, Focal Species Approach to Linkage Design – Lessons From Arizona and Southern California
  Paul Beier, Northern Arizona University
  
  
• Wildlife and Roads: The State of the Science and Practice
  Patricia Cramer, Utah State University
  
  
• Identifying Wildlife Crossing Placement in Tijeras Canyon, New Mexico
  Paul Knight and Marcel Browne, Marron and Associates; Matt Clark, Norhern Arizona University
  
  
• The Enigma of Wildlife Crossings – Where to Place Them and Do They Work?
  Tony Clevenger, Western Transportation Institute
  
  
• The Right Work in the Right Place: Implementing an Ecosystem Approach for Infrastructure Projects
  Janice Weingart Brown P.E., Federal Highway Administration
  
  
• Wildlife Accident Reporting System (WARS) 1983-2002: Integrating Data into Transportation Planning
  Leonard Sielecki, British Columbia Ministry of Transportation
  
  
• Panel Discussion: Wildlife Linkage Approaches: Land Conservation and Management
  Ray Sauvajot (Panel Chair), National Park Service; Adam Switalski, Wildlands CPR; Geary Hund and Chris Servheen, US Fish and Wildlife Service; Rick Ellis, Pima County DOT; Josh Burnim, American Wildlands; Ed Armenta, US Forest Service
  
  
• Crossing Monitoring and Adaptive Management: State Route 260 Case Study
  Norris Dodd and Jeff Gagnon, Arizona Game and Fish Department
  
  
• Education and Outreach: Utilizing Non-profits to Raise Awareness
  Monique DiGiorgio, Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project
  
  
• Conservation Banking
  Trisha White, Defenders of Wildlife
  
  
• Highway Funding for Nature
  Charlie Chester, Henry P. Kendall Foundation
  
  
• Panel Discussion: Creative Sources of Funding for Wildlife Crossings
  Trisha White (Panel Chair), Defenders of Wildlife; Pat Bastings, Montana DOT; Ray Sauvajot, National Park Service; Steve Thomas, Federal Highway Administration; Sara Coulter and Shirley Jentsch, San Juan Corridors Coalition
  
  
• Engineering Considerations with Wildlife Crossings
  Diane Yates and Craig R.Gaskill, Carter & Burgess
  
  
• Maintenance of Wildlife Crossing Structures
  Vicki Bever, Arizona DOT
  
  
• Integrating Fish and Wildlife Passages
  Randy Reeve, Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife
  
  
• Mitigation of Wetlands Impacts Associated With U.S. Highway 93: Reconstruction on the Flathead Indian Reservation
  Dale Becker, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes
  
  
• Conclusions
  Bill Ruediger, Facilitator

DAY ONE

Welcome and Logistics
Monique DiGiorgio, Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project
Lonnie Hendrix, Arizona DOT
[View video (RealMedia, Windows Media)]

A Collaborative, Focal Species Approach to Linkage Design – Lessons From Arizona and Southern California
Paul Beier, Northern Arizona University
[View slides (4.6MB), View video (RealMedia, Windows Media)]

Southern California and Arizona have embarked on ambitious programs to design linkages that will conserve and restore connectivity among wildlands. Although the two efforts differ in organization structure, both efforts have converged on an approach with four key elements: multi-agency collaboration, prioritization of potential linkages, transparent GIS models of movement by focal species, and detailed linkage designs that emphasize core-to-core connectivity.

Paul Beier is Professor of Conservation Biology in the School of Forestry at Northern Arizona University. His current work focuses on ecoregional conservation planning, including least cost corridor analysis, and collaborative, science-based "missing linkages" efforts in Arizona and southern California. He also works with traditional chiefs in West Africa to create and manage two community-based wildlife sanctuaries and serves on the Board of Governors of the Society for Conservation Biology.

Wildlife and Roads: The State of the Science and Practice
Patricia Cramer, Utah State University
[View slides (2.9MB), View video (RealMedia, Windows Media)]

In our talk, we will introduce workshop participants to the state of road ecology with respect to wildlife. We will review current trends in research and practice and layout priorities for researchers and practitioners.

Currently, Patricia Cramer is working as a Research Associate on the National Academies-NCHRP sponsored research project titled Evaluation of the Use and Effectiveness of Wildlife Crossings at Utah State University. She is interested in connectivity of the landscape for wide-ranging species. She has consulted with Western Transportation Institute and has been a Visiting Assistant Professor at Montana State and the University of Florida. While working on her dissertation modeling Florida panther movements, she was a member of Paynes Prairie Wildlife Coalition. This group of scientists was instrumental in creating the series of ecopassages for wildlife along a highway which bisects the Paynes Prairie State Reserve in Gainesville, Florida.

Identifying Wildlife Crossing Placement in Tijeras Canyon, New Mexico
Paul Knight and Marcel Browne, Marron and Associates; Matt Clark, Northern Arizona University
[View slides (4.1MB), View video (RealMedia, Windows Media)]

Interstate 40 and Route 66 cut like a buzzsaw through Tijeras Canyon between the Sandia and Manzano Mountains, creating a formidable barrier to wildlife movement and posing a serious threat to motorists' safety. The Tijeras Canyon Safe Passage Coalition has formed a diverse constituency that is working closely with state agencies and is advocating for the implementation of effective measures and monitoring that will result in improved permeability and motorist safety.

Paul Knight acquired his graduate degree in biology from the University of New Mexico in 1979. From 1981-1989, Mr. Knight served as the state botanist at the New Mexico Department of Natural Resources in Santa Fe. In 1989, Mr. Knight joined the private sector and has participated in the completion of hundreds of NEPA studies and biological surveys including the preparation of environmental assessments, environmental impact statements, biological reports/assessments, and wetland determinations. He also served as a member of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Federal Recovery Team in New Mexico; an adjunct professor at the University of New Mexico Planning Department; Adjunct Naturalist for the New Mexico Museum of Natural History; the chair of the Senior Botany of the Regional Science Fair, and has been an active member of the New Mexico Rare Plant Technical Council since its formation. Mr. Knight currently serves as Senior Environmental Scientist for Marron and Associates, Inc. in Albuquerque.

Marcel Browne currently serves as an Environmental Project Manager and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Project Manager for Marron and Associates, Inc. Mr. Browne provides GIS office and field support for the biologists and archaeologists at Marron. Mr. Browne moved to Albuquerque in 1996 to pursue graduate work at the University of New Mexico. Shortly thereafter, he began working in technical writing with an emphasis on the NEPA process and GIS. He has completed GIS coursework at various institutions including Earth Systems Research Institute (ESRI on-line) and Penn State University World Campus.

Matt Clark is from Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he grew up at the foothills of the Sandia Mountains. He is pursuing an M.S. in Forestry at Northern Arizona University, working on a project to prioritize grassland restoration treatments for pronghorn on Anderson Mesa, Arizona. He has worked in various capacities for organizations such as the Sky Island Alliance, New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, Wildlands Project and Grand Canyon Wildlands Council. He conducted research for the Sky Islands Conservation Plan, and has coordinated and co-authored both the New Mexico Highlands and Grand Canyon Conservation Visions. Matt is an active member of the Tijeras Canyon Safe Passage Coalition.

The Enigma of Wildlife Crossings – Where to Place Them and Do They Work?
Tony Clevenger, Western Transportation Institute
[View slides (3.3MB), View video (RealMedia, Windows Media)]

This presentation discusses current approaches to determining crossing structure placement on highway projects, performance criteria and methods of evaluating whether criteria are being met. The presentation considers needs, constraints and goals of stakeholders involved in the planning and performance of transportation infrastructure projects. Last, guiding principles are discussed for planning and measuring performance of mitigation crossings for wildlife that consider a range of ecological goals, time-frames, and changes in landscape conditions.

Tony Clevenger is a senior wildlife biologist at the Western Transportation Institute at Montana State University. Since 1996, he has been contracted by Parks Canada to carry out long-term research assessing the performance of mitigation measures designed to reduce habitat fragmentation on the Trans-Canada Highway in Banff National Park, Alberta. Tony has worked as a research wildlife biologist for the Worldwide Fund for Nature – International (Gland, Switzerland), Ministry of Environment – France (Toulouse), U.S. Forest Service and U.S. National Park Service.

The Right Work in the Right Place: Implementing an Ecosystem Approach for Infrastructure Projects
Janice Weingart Brown P.E., Federal Highway Administration
[View slides (445KB), View video (RealMedia, Windows Media)]

A multiagency steering committee is guiding the development of a new handbook, The Right Work in the Right Place: Implementing an Ecosystem Approach for Infrastructure Projects. The Handbook emphasizes an integrated, collaborative approach with Federal, state and local agencies and tribal governments and with the public to determine and prioritize the areas in a region which are most critical to sustaining important wildlife and aquatic resources and to focus mitigation efforts on these priority sites using a banking concept. The Handbook will offer an alternative approach to the current project by project approach to mitigation.

Janice Weingart Brown is Division Administrator for the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) in Helena, Montana. She leads a diverse staff of engineers, planners, realty and financial specialists in the administration of the Federal-Aid highway program in Montana. While Division Administrator, she lead the FHWA team in negotiating an agreement between the Montana Department of Transportation, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and FHWA for improvements to U.S. 93 in western Montana. This project has since received national recognition for its environmental and cultural features. Ms. Brown is currently working to promote an ecosystem approach to developing infrastructure projects. Janice is a graduate of the University of Connecticut, where she received a degree in Civil Engineering, and is a registered professional engineer in Washington State. She joined the FHWA in 1976 and has held various planning, research and design positions in New York, Connecticut, Washington, Maine and Nevada. She is currently studying to earn her Master's degree in transportation policy, operations and logistics from George Mason University.

Wildlife Accident Reporting System (WARS) 1983-2002: Integrating Data into Transportation Planning
Leonard Sielecki, British Columbia Ministry of Transportation
[View slides (3.5MB), View video (RealMedia, Windows Media)]

The British Columbia Ministry of Transportation (BCMoT) has been operating a comprehensive program to systematically monitor highway-related wildlife mortality in British Columbia for over two decades. The Wildlife Accident Reporting System (WARS) provides a rare opportunity to examine the impact on wildlife of an extensive highway network transecting a large geographic area with diverse climatic and physiographic characteristics.

Leonard Sielecki is a professional biologist and a professional land use planner employed as the Environmental Issues Analyst of the British Columbia Ministry of Transportation. He coordinates the Ministry's wildlife accident mitigation initiatives, manages its Wildlife Accident Reporting System (WARS) database and publishes the WARS annual report. Leonard is the Ministry's liaison with federal and provincial agencies on wildlife issues and provides consulting services to Transport Canada. His academic background includes a B.Sc. in Biology and Geography and a Masters in Geography. Currently, Leonard is pursuing a Ph.D. on wildlife accident mitigation at the University of Victoria.

Panel Discussion: Wildlife Linkage Approaches: Land Conservation and Management
Ray Sauvajot (Panel Chair), National Park Service; Adam Switalski, Wildlands CPR; Geary Hund and Chris Servheen, US Fish and Wildlife Service; Rick Ellis, Pima County DOT; Josh Burnim, American Wildlands; Ed Armenta, US Forest Service
[View slides (4.8MB), View video (RealMedia, Windows Media)]

Ray Sauvajot is Chief of Planning, Science and Resource Management at Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area and is a Science Advisor for the National Park Service. Ray also holds adjunct faculty positions at UCLA and CSU Northridge. Ray designs and supervises ecological studies, manages science and research, and oversees cultural resource programs and planning in the Santa Monica Mountains. Ray also assists other units of the National Park System. Ray's research focuses on the effects of urban encroachment and habitat fragmentation on wildlife, including the effects of roads. Ray obtained a B.A. degree in biology from UC San Diego and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in ecology from UC Davis.

Adam Switalski is Science Coordinator for Wildlands CPR, a national conservation group that revives and protects wild places by promoting road removal, preventing road construction and limiting motorized recreation. He earned an M.S. in Wildlife Ecology from Utah State University where he quantified the impacts of wolf reintroduction on coyotes. Adam has conducted ecological research with a number of federal agencies and non-profits and has recently published a review of road removal research. He is affiliate faculty at the University of Montana and is currently coordinating road removal research projects in Montana, Idaho and Oregon.

Geary Hund is a graduate of Humboldt State University with a BS degree in Wildlife Management. Geary is currently a Refuge Biologist at Cibola National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona. He recently completed a 25-year career with California State Parks, having last worked as a Senior Ecologist. Geary's focus is ecological restoration and habitat conservation planning, with specific expertise in prescribed burning, exotic species control, re-vegetation, landform restoration, inventory and monitoring, conservation biology and environmental compliance. Geary was instrumental in the preservation of a habitat linkage of statewide importance in California, a project which received nation-wide attention. Geary received the 1998 Drury award for professional integrity from the Director of California State Parks and a special commendation for his work in 2002.

Chris Servheen has been the Grizzly Bear Recovery Coordinator for the USFWS for 23 years. As such, he is responsible for coordinating all the research and management on grizzly bears in the lower 48 states and working with biologists in Alberta and British Columbia. He was the EIS Team Leader for the Bitterroot Grizzly Bear Reintroduction EIS. His interests involve bear conservation and management and the relationships between human activities and bear distribution and survival. Much of his current work, and that of his graduate students, involves the impacts of highways and human developments on habitat fragmentation for bears and other large carnivores in the Rocky Mountains. He led projects involving the application of Global Positioning System (GPS) collars on grizzly bears and black bears to learn more about their detailed movements in relationship to human activity. He also works with state and federal highway departments in developing ways to get animals across highways.

Rick Ellis graduated from the University of Arizona in 1991 with a Bachelors degree in Civil Engineering. He worked for the Washington State Department of Transportation in Seattle for approximately 12 years in a variety of design, inspection, project and office management positions. He retuned to Tucson in August 2003 and is currently the Engineering Division Manager within Pima County Department of Transportation (DOT). The Pima County DOT has recently developed and is implementing guidelines, policies and procedures for environmentally sensitive design for a number of county roadways. The goal is to provide a roadway design that avoids, minimizes and mitigates the impacts to the surrounding environmental while still providing the necessary transportation functions.

Joshua Burnim is the Lands Program Coordinator for American Wildlands. American Wildlands has mapped all of the U.S. Northern Rockies' key wildlife corridors while highlighting the pinch-points where busy roadways bisect key linkage zones. Josh works with wildlife biologists, transportation officials and engineers to help design more wildlife-friendly highways. He integrates highway mitigation with adjacent private lands conservation and public lands management to protect all three components of a particular corridor. Josh has an MS in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana where his thesis focused on wildlife habitat connectivity.

Ed Armenta has a Bachelor of Science degree in Wildlife from Humboldt State University in California. He has been with the Forest Service for 24 years, and half of this time was spent as a wildlife biologist. He has worked on four national forests, two in California and two in Arizona. He has been the District Ranger in Payson since August 2000.

Crossing Monitoring and Adaptive Management: State Route 260 Case Study
Norris Dodd and Jeff Gagnon, Arizona Game and Fish Department
[View slides (12.3MB), View video (RealMedia, Windows Media)]

Norris and Jeff provide an overview of their State Route 260 wildlife-vehicle relationships research project, ongoing since 2002. They highlight Arizona Department of Transportation's integration of eleven wildlife underpasses and six bridges (and ungulate-proof fencing) into the phased highway upgrade to reduce the incidence of wildlife-vehicle collisions and maintain wildlife permeability. They also describe ongoing construction adaptive management with ADOT and the Tonto National Forest to improve the effectiveness of underpasses and develop fencing strategies, as well as their application of GPS telemetry and video surveillance technology to assess use of underpasses and permeability. This presentation serves as a foundation for the workshop's field day.

Norris Dodd has worked for Arizona Game and Fish for 25 years, the past 10 as a wildlife research biologist. He was previously a Regional Supervisor and a habitat specialist/program manager involved in forest conservation, livestock grazing, Mexican wolf reintroduction and other issues in the White Mountains of Arizona. Since 2001, Norris has been working on wildlife-highway relationships research and management, focusing on the State Route 260 project in central Arizona. Norris received Bachelors and Masters degrees from Arizona State University. He is a past president of the Arizona Chapter of the Wildlife Society.

Jeff Gagnon started with Arizona Game and Fish six years ago, and has worked as a research technician and biologist since 2002 on the State Route 260 research project. Jeff received his Bachelors degree from Northern Arizona University and is currently working there on a Masters degree focusing on temporal and spatial wildlife highway crossing patterns and vehicle traffic levels. His strong electrical background has been invaluable to the application of video surveillance monitoring of passage structures along State Route 260.

DAY TWO

Field Trip – State Route 260, Payson, Arizona
[View photo gallery, View video (RealMedia, Windows Media)]

Education and Outreach: Utilizing Non-profits to Raise Awareness
Monique DiGiorgio, Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project
[View slides (5.7MB), View video (RealMedia, Windows Media)]

The emerging field of Road Ecology and the importance of wildlife crossings need to be introduced to the general public to raise awareness and garner support for the construction of these structures. The Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project (SREP) launched the "Colorado Wildlife on the Move" safety campaign to educate drivers about wildlife movement and wildlife crossings. The campaign was a great success, with over 30,000 driver safety tip sheets and 500 posters distributed in 85 cities and 150 locations. The campaign will continue due to additional requests for outreach tools, as well as heightened public interest.

Monique DiGiorgio earned a B.S. in Biology from the University of Notre Dame and has been working for 10 years in the field of conservation biology and ecology. For the first six years of her career, Monique worked as a field biologist with a focus in ornithology. She spent much of her time nest searching and conducting behavioral observations, which took her from New South Wales, Australia studying the satin bowerbird, to San Diego, California studying the rufous-crowned sparrow, as well as many other sites. This work has allowed her to cultivate relationships with agencies, universities and non-profits and has given her a breadth of experience in ecology. More recently, Monique has been working in non-profit management and development with conservation groups such as Friends of Milwaukee's Rivers and Menomonee Valley Partners. She brings experience in fundraising, program development, capacity building, graphic design and relationship building to SREP.

DAY THREE

Conservation Banking
Trisha White, Defenders of Wildlife
[View slides (1.6MB), View video (RealMedia, Windows Media)]

Conservation banking is the practice of proactively preserving large, contiguous and viable tracts of habitat for the purpose of offsetting the adverse impacts of future development projects. Through a combination of comprehensive large-scale planning and a coordinated mitigation strategy, states and communities can "bank" important conservation areas, thus reducing conflicts between development and conservation aims, reducing the costs of both and actually increasing ecological effectiveness.

Trisha White is the Director of Defenders of Wildlife's Habitat & Highways Campaign at their national headquarters in Washington, D.C. The Habitat & Highways campaign seeks to reduce the impact of surface transportation infrastructure on wildlife and encourages state and local authorities to incorporate wildlife conservation into transportation and community planning. In partnership with Surface Transportation Policy Project (STPP), Trisha released a report, Second Nature: Improving Transportation Without Putting Nature Second, which has since been awarded the 2004 NRCA Award of Achievement for best publication. Prior to Defenders, Trisha spent three years with World Resources Institute's Biological Resources program and one year as environment policy consultant to USAID's Global Environment Center. In 2000, she received her Masters degree in Environment & Resource Policy from George Washington University.

Highway Funding for Nature
Charlie Chester, Henry P. Kendall Foundation
[View slides (4.6MB), View video (RealMedia, Windows Media)]

Of the many insights generated by the burgeoning science of road ecology, one of the more prosaic is that protecting wildlife from the effects of roads will often be quite costly. This talk will focus on the financing of wildlife mitigation, with a particular focus on the role of private foundations.

Charles Chester is a Program Consultant for the Henry P. Kendall Foundation in Boston and is currently completing a book tentatively entitled Biodiversity over the Edge: Conservation Organizations and the Protection of Transborder Ecosystems in North America (Island Press). Charlie has also taught Conserving Biological Diversity at the Fletcher School of Tufts University, having graduated from the same institution in May 2003 (Ph.D.). He has worked as a consultant to the Union of Concerned Scientists and the World Foundation for Environment and Development. He has also worked on toxic waste site remediation and indoor air-quality issues.

Panel Discussion: Creative Sources of Funding for Wildlife Crossings
Trisha White (Panel Chair), Defenders of Wildlife; Pat Bastings, Montana DOT; Ray Sauvajot, National Park Service; Steve Thomas, Federal Highway Administration; Sara Coulter and Shirley Jentsch, San Juan Corridors Coalition
[View slides (2.9MB), View video (RealMedia, Windows Media)]

Pat Bastings has been the district biologist with the Montana Department of Transportation for more than ten years. In the mid and late 1990s, he wrote and submitted the first wetland mitigation banking prospectus in Montana to the Corps of Engineers, worked on several stream and river restoration projects, and was a project coordinator of a wetland mitigation project located on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in north central Montana. When he transferred into the Missoula District in 2000, wildlife connectivity issues were beginning to gain momentum and recognition. Since that time, he has been heavily involved in the entire spectrum of transportation/wildlife issues.

Steve Thomas has been the Environmental Program Manager for the Federal Highway Administration Arizona Division Office since 1989. In addition to his general NEPA responsibilities, Steve also works with the Endangered Species Act, the Historic Preservation Program and the Clean Water Act, in both the program and project levels. Steve has worked on more than 10 Environmental Impact Statements and has helped develop many multi-agency Programmatic Agreements and Memorandums of Agreement. These include work with such agencies as the US Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the US Army Corps of Engineers, the Environmental Protection Agency and the State Historic Preservation Office. In addition, Steve served as the Transportation Enhancement Coordinator through 2004. Prior to coming to Arizona in 1984, Steve worked with FHWA's Federal Lands Program and the US Forest Service doing roadway survey work. This includes work on Mount Saint Helens, both before and after the eruption in 1980.

Sara Coulter retired from university teaching in 2000 and moved to Ridgway, Colorado, where she has been involved in many local activities, including the San Juan Corridors Coalition (SJCC), which she helped to establish. Sara has particularly focused on zoning and development issues in Ouray County. Sara earned her B.A. in English at Colorado College and her Ph.D. in English at CU Boulder. She taught English and Women's Studies for 35 years in the University of Maryland system, primarily at Towson University outside Baltimore. She directed a number of grant projects to integrate scholarship on women into the liberal arts curriculum and founded a national center at Towson University devoted to that work. She retired as Professor Emeritus.

Shirley Jentsch is enjoying retirement in Montrose, Colorado. A 1972 University of Colorado Sociology graduate, Shirley continues a family tradition of outdoor activities from birding to angling. A longtime resident of Colorado's front range, she was active in the school field trip interpretive program at Barr Lake State Park with the Division of Wildlife. She was also a member of Adams County Trails and Open Space Foundation and monitored local open space issues for the Adams County League of Women Voters. Now on the western slopes, her concern is focused on Montrose County and local CDOT issues with San Juan Corridors Coalition.

Engineering Considerations with Wildlife Crossings
Diane Yates and Craig R. Gaskill, Carter & Burgess
[View slides (6.5MB), View video (RealMedia, Windows Media)]

This presentation focuses on the factors that affect cost-effective solutions for wildlife crossings. Examples of planned and constructed wildlife crossings will be featured including design issues, different types and sizes of crossing structures and construction costs.

Diane Yates is a registered landscape architect and leader of the Ecological Restoration Group for Carter & Burgess, Inc. in Denver, Colorado. With over 23 years of professional experience, Diane's specialty is the planning and mitigation design for impacts by transportation projects to natural environments. Diane is often part of the project Environmental Assessment team, identifying potential impacts to wetlands, scenic resources and sensitive wildlife habitats. Her work often continues through the design and preparation of construction documents, supervising construction and monitoring the success of revegetation after project construction is complete. Recent project experience incorporating wildlife crossings includes Guanella Pass Road, SH 160 east of Wolf Creek Pass and E-470 in Colorado, and US 93 near Pablo and SH 83 Clearwater Junction near Glacier National Park in Montana.

Craig Gaskill, P.E., AICP is a Senior Transportation Engineer for the Denver office of Carter & Burgess. He has over 21 years of experience in transportation planning and engineering. His experience runs from early planning of transportation projects to final design and construction management. His recent experience includes developing context-sensitive design solutions for both rural and urban transportation corridors, including the development of wildlife crossings on the US 285 corridor southwest out of Denver. Other relevant projects include transit and highway improvements in the State Highway 82 corridor between Aspen and Glenwood Springs and rehabilitation of the Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park.

Maintenance of Wildlife Crossing Structures
Vicki Bever, Arizona DOT
[View slides (2.4MB), View video (RealMedia, Windows Media)]

Victoria Bever is a project manager for Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT). As a project manager, she is responsible for the oversight of many new highway construction projects. This effort includes determining and maintaining project scopes, schedules and budgets from scoping through construction and into maintenance, team building with ADOT and non-ADOT stakeholders, developing and administering consultant contracts, and sustaining communication throughout all project phases with all interested parties.

Integrating Fish and Wildlife Passages
Randy Reeve, Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife
[View slides (7.2MB), View video (RealMedia, Windows Media)]

Designing fish and wildlife passage projects for more than the target species.

For the past 22 years, Randy Reeve has worked for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW). He has been based all over the state doing habitat and management activities. For the last seven years he has been the ODFW / Oregon department of Transportation (ODOT) statewide coordinator. He works with ODOT's staff in designing, reviewing and constructing fish and wildlife passage projects on state highways. He also works with their construction and maintenance programs to minimize impacts and design avoidance measures. A highlight of his career was being asked by the Russian government to be the first person to ever radio tag and track the steelhead listed in Russia's Red Book of Endangered Species. This was done on a remote uninhabited portion of the Kamchatka Peninsula in 1996.

Mitigation of Wetlands Impacts Associated With U. S. Highway 93: Reconstruction on the Flathead Indian Reservation
Dale Becker, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes
[View slides (4.3MB), View video (RealMedia, Windows Media)]

Reconstruction of U. S. Highway 93 through the Flathead Indian Reservation involves a large number of diverse issues, including traditional and ecological concerns, impacts upon varied wetland and riparian habitats and development of mitigation plans that fit the Tribes' Wetland Conservation Plan directives, as well as the applicable federal statutes and regulatory processes. A brief history of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes' wetland conservation efforts and the various facets of mitigation planning for this project are presented.

Dale Becker received a B.S. and an M.S. in Wildlife Biology from the University of Montana. He has lived in western Montana since 1977 and has worked professionally for the Forest Service, the Montana Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit, the University of Montana and for private environmental consulting firms. He is a Certified Wildlife Biologist and has been employed as the Tribal Wildlife Program Manager for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Indian Reservation for the past 16 years. His areas of interest are raptor ecology and management, hydroelectric mitigation and highway mitigation planning and species reintroductions.

Conclusions
Bill Ruediger, Facilitator
[View video (RealMedia, Windows Media)]

Bill Ruediger retired in December 2004 after 35 years with the US Forest Service. Bill's last position was that of national Ecology Program Leader for Highways. In this position, Bill worked throughout the US and in other countries on trouble-shooting difficult highway projects with wildlife and fish coordination issues, helping states organize and establish wildlife habitat linkage programs, developing processes to assess and mitigate wildlife and fish habitat with roads and highways and worked with state DOT's on wildlife crossings. He also was a founder and chairperson of the Western Forest Carnivore Committee and a co-founder of the International Conference on Ecology and Transportation. He has authored or co-authored over 25 published papers on carnivores and/or highways. Bill has received over 20 Forest Service and interagency awards including the Chief's Award for Excellence in Endangered Species Management and the Forest Service/BLM Combined Award for Best Project of the Year (2000 - Lynx Conservation Assessment and Strategy). In April 2005, he will receive "Environmental Leadership Award" from FHWA, the first time this award has been presented to a non-transportation agency person. He has a B.S. in wildlife management from Utah State University and a Master's degree in Forestry from University of Idaho. Bill currently operates Wildlife Consulting Resources out of Missoula, Montana, a consulting business focusing on solving transportation issues related to wildlife and fish resources.

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