Managers discover there's more to a right of way than vegetation.

By Penelope Grenoble O'Malley

The concept of right-of-way management is being extended as utility and transportation managers are pressed to expand the function of these open stretches of land. This can mean more than installing a few native species by the side of the road and often extends to designing culverts and other features to safeguard wildlife. "We probably tracked the Florida panther for five years before we located exactly where we wanted to put the crossings," says LeRoy Irwin, manager of the Florida Department of Transportation (DOT) Environmental Management Office.

"Even though we're in right-of-way vegetation management, our business is the establishment or reestablishment of native grasses," says Jim Brayton of Townsend Chemical Division (TCD) in Selma, IN. "Warm-season grasses and wildlife habitat actually have been a part of vegetation management on rights of way for a number of years now.

Wildlife Overpass

"With utility companies, state departments of transportation, and even some county highway departments, this is something they're emphasizing more and more every year, and we spend a lot of time as a company educating them." The trend Brayton describes is not necessarily altruistic, however; it is being spurred in part by federal and state endangered species legislation, by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), and by pressure from local environmental groups and national organizations that support expanding habitat for game species.

Equally compelling is that the education Brayton says TCD is providing concerns the use of herbicides first to rid a target area of weeds and invasive vegetation and then to manage the reintroduced natives once they're established. For example, both initial clearing and the three- to five-year maintenance that establishing such vegetation as warm-season grasses can require involve the use of a selective spectrum herbicide, such as BASF's Plateau (developed in part to support restoration of native prairie grasses in the United States).

"Research shows that when using the right herbicides for vegetation control, you actually have a more positive shift for wildlife species, as far as nutritional value, brood habitat, and ground nesting birds [go], than when compared to mowing," says Todd Horton of BASF in Macon, NC.

"We're calling this generation ‘smart herbicides' because the way they work is to take out the invasive species and leave what's desirable," says Horton's Wyoming counterpart, BASF's Ecological Restoration Specialist Jennifer Vollmer, who comes equipped with a Ph.D. in weed science from Virginia Tech. "You can control the weed you're after around trees and over the top of brush and leave the grasses and forbs and wildflowers that you want." Vollmer reports that this type of herbicide is being used in the West to control invasive cheatgrass and allow native grasses to regenerate. "Out in the Big Horn Basin in Wyoming where it looks like you've got a monoculture of cheatgrass, you spray, and without planting, the natives come right back." Fire is a danger to both range and rights of way that have been infested with cheatgrass, and Vollmer says she's looking forward to Plateau being approved for a range label so Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land managers can use it. "There are a number of ranchers who are into getting rid of the cheatgrass so the natives can establish a firebreak, but they're surrounded by BLM land that's infested with it."

Game Species Advocates
In the Southeast and the Midwest, the effort to reestablish native grasses is being supported by wildlife groups, such as Quail Unlimited, Ducks Unlimited, Pheasants Forever, and the National Wild Turkey Federation, all pushing for vegetation that supports these individual species. "State DOTs have responded either statewide or by district," says Brayton. "In some cases, the move is aimed at reducing or eliminating mowing as a way to control weeds and create habitat or using a combination of mowing and herbicide applications and planting native species. The point is to replace vegetation, such as autumn olive and multiflora rose, that has traditionally been planted for habitat and living fences but has little if any nutritive value and grows so thick nothing can get established underneath, with very few species using it for nesting or protective cover."

Revegetation for established wildlife habitats works best, says Brayton, when it provides good cover and winter protection for a variety of animals, not just the target species a special interest group may be lobbying for. "The whole ecosystem changes. Every traveling songbird benefits from a place it can use for nesting and food."
Jef Hodges, regional director for Quail Unlimited's Great Plains Region office and a specialist in revegetation through his company Total Resource Management in Clinton, MI, agrees that using low-volume applications of herbicides is a good approach for establishing natives because it leaves nature undisturbed. "What we're doing is controlling those species that present management problems. Typically the landowner who gets involved in this kind of program is what I call a ‘recreational' landowner; he may be taking some income off of what he owns, but it's not his only source of revenue."

On the Ground
"My position," says Kevin Moss, environmental scientist for Cinergy Corp. in Cincinnati, OH, "is to try to give the owners of the property what they want." Cinergy's power lines and pipelines cross private property, and Cinergy maintains the rights of way. "Most of the people who are contacting me now want some type of wildlife habitat." Moss says property owners who enter into a written agreement with the utility that specifies responsibilities in regard to the management of the right of way are realizing that mowing is not only disruptive but also can create more problems than it solves. "You mow down a sapling and it will root and sprout on you two or three times," says Moss, "which means you end up with more shoots and stems per acre." Cingery has rights of way in three states: Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. Some it owns, but most are easements. Some are planted in income-producing pasture, and some are idle.

Once a landowner makes a request, Moss first clears the area of weeds and exotics with burning or a broad-spectrum herbicide, such as Roundup, so the native grasses he generally plants—big and little bluestem, switchgrass, Indian grass, and sideoats grama—can get established without competition. Maintenance involves applications of a selective herbicide, such as Plateau, or burning. If conditions are right, Moss prefers burning as the natural mechanism by which prairie ecosystems stay healthy. "If you've got a lot of fescue and weeds and not so much woody vegetation, you can wait until spring—or even through the winter—and burn that off so you're down to soil. Then you go in at the beginning of the growing season when what you want to remove is about 6 inches tall and do a good application of a herbicide like Plateau or a mixture of Plateau and Roundup." Planting is with a no-till drill at about 4 lb./ac. to establish a mosaic pattern. Next to a right of way, Moss increases the seed to 11–12 lb./ac., which produces a thick cover that keeps trees from getting established, an important consideration on a power-line right of way. "Some of these grasses are 6 to 9 feet tall with 16-foot root systems," says Moss. "Once they get established, it's difficult for woody stem and other species to grow because there's no sunlight that reaches the ground, which is important when vegetation on either side of the right of way is not natural and may be a source of weeds or invasives.

"We've been doing this for almost seven years. The emphasis is environmental—we wanted to replace lost wildlife habitat—and it saves us some money. If I can get prairie grass growing and choke out the trees, then we don't need a tree crew out there." Liabilities include the up-front cost of clearing vegetation (Moss estimates the cost of seed and chemicals at $75–$100/ac.), the fact that prescribed burning is not always an option (such as when a right of way occurs close to a subdivision), and the fact that the natives can take three to five years to establish. "It's not really pretty for the first couple of years," says Moss, "but once it becomes a mature stand, it's just beautiful. You add some wildflowers, and it's absolutely gorgeous." Prairie grasses also create topsoil, and Moss thinks the way they establish themselves in clumps creates good habitat as compared to clod-forming grasses, providing bare ground in between the plants for turkey poults and quail chicks to forage under cover. Moss also has created a mix that includes clovers, rye, and some alfalfa, which he says attracts deer and turkeys. If the property owner specifies, he'll add forbs to the mix, and where the right of way is highly visible, he includes wildflowers for color and to bring in birds. Warm-season grasses require no soil amendments, fertilizer, or liming and will grow even in rocky soil.

Limitations
In Michigan, DOT Maintenance Division Resource Analyst Darwin Heme is less enthusiastic about natives, especially in situations where visibility along a roadway is key or erosion control is an issue. "In some situations, we use prairie grasses, but in a situation where we want to be sure what we plant is going to come up, we're going with your cool-season grasses. If we plant natives, it's got to be [in] an area that can withstand runoff because they take two to three years longer to get established. Timing is another issue. With most of our construction projects, we may be seeding in November." Additionally, Heme points out that Michigan is not really a prairie state, emphasizing that you don't want to try establishing vegetation that isn't natural to an area. He says, however, the department will plant natives in situations where a local group has secured funding and made a request. At Quail Unlimited, Hodges points out that while the difference in establishment time between natives and introduced species traditionally has been a problem, in the last three to five years new techniques have been developed with which natives can be established just as quickly. "We're beginning to see erosion control mats that can be used that are compatible with native grasses. Mulching is also another option, and we've found that if you provide weed control on native grasses, you can establish them in one growing season."
From Wyoming, Vollmer further suggests that in highly erodible areas one solution is to mix natives with Siberian wheatgrass or Russian wild rye, the idea being that the introduced species will hold the bank while the natives get established—although she cautions that whatever you choose should not outcompete the natives to become a monoculture and that in situations where immediate cover is important, it's wise to include an unpalatable grass in order to reduce wildlife grazing.

Out West
In southern California, Caltrans (the state's Department of Transportation) District 7 Chief Biologist Paul Carrone says his main goal in planting natives is vegetation that's compatible with neighboring ecosystems. "We look at the dominant species in an area and also the subdominants. If the right of way is adjacent to a walnut woodlands, for example, I'm going to push for walnuts and the species that grow under their canopy. Most of the time we specify a six- to 12-month plant establishment period where we do maintenance and manual watering. My preference is for 12 months because I want to get what we plant through four seasons, but at a minimum we always get them through their first summer with watering. Maintenance means hand-weeding—our use of herbicides is down to a minimum these days. In our district we don't install irrigation because I find it's a big impact when we try to take it out."

For stormwater management, Carrone says the district likes native plants because of their strong taproots—"hillsides with a 100% canopy are very stable"—but also might use what he calls ‘naturalized vegetation' to get something established. One example he gives is North American noninvasives, such as Kentucky bluegrass. "It's innocuous, neither negative nor positive."

Although the idea of matching revegetation with adjacent natural ecosystems is accepted practice, Carrone admits wildlife is a recent priority, brought into specific focus when a team of wildlife biologists followed a mountain lion as it established a home range that included two habitat blocks bisected by Riverside Freeway (State Route 91). The cat crossed the eight-lane freeway 22 times in 18 months, traveling down a naturally vegetated drainage into a flood control culvert under the freeway and out into natural habitat on the other side. Pressed by local conservation groups (and by the fact that proposed development on the south side of the freeway was forestalled when the state bought the land as a park), Caltrans eventually took the on- and off-ramps where the cougar crossed the freeway permanently out of service, removing lights, redoing fencing to help direct other forms of wildlife toward the bridge that carried the road over this natural drainage, and ripping up the asphalt under the underpass. The Department of Parks and Recreation is now planning vegetation with the twin goals of removing exotics and restoring rare alluvium scrub vegetation on the north side of the freeway and replanting the approaches to the undercrossing to draw in wildlife.

"The culvert, because of the lack of light and space and vegetation, would only support a very narrow suite of species," says Geary Hund, former senior state park ecologist for the California Department of Parks and Recreation who has overseen the project, "mainly medium-bodied to large-bodied mammals with the notable exception of deer, which need to be able to see the terrain on the other side and the skyline to feel comfortable. Wildlife might want to approach the undercrossing, but currently there isn't enough cover that extends up to and through the bridge. For a cougar, this is a hop, skip, and a jump, but for a deer mouse, it might take several generations of dwelling in the corridor to get across. There's also a whole suite of species of birds that live in sage scrub and chaparral and that stick close to cover. So there has to be enough of the right kind of plant species for them to travel from bush to bush." The plan calls for the riparian habitat of the Cleveland National Forest that spills into the canyon on the south of the freeway to gradually flow into coastal sage scrub closer to the crossing and then into the rarer alluvium scrub as wildlife commute toward the habitat of Chino Hills State Park. The state also will remove northside levees installed to protect a former riding stable to allow the drainage out of the Santa Ana Mountains to re-create its natural delta, reintroducing nutrient-rich soil and protecting newly established vegetation from erosion. Although the project will be completed by a state agency, because there is a stream involved it will require, at a minimum, permits from the US Army Corps of Engineers and the California Department of Fish and Game. Hund expects the effort to take approximately two years.

Bear Underpass

Getting the Bear Over the Bridge
Caltrans's Riverside Freeway project illustrates expanding agency responsibility when it comes to transportation rights of way where they bisect existing wildlife habitats. According to Bruce Leeson, environmental assessment scientist for Parks Canada in Calgary, AB, who has worked on the upgrading of the Trans-Canada Highway through Banff National Park for more than 30 years, "Very commonly when agencies reclaimed rights of way, they used agronomic species, which ungulates like elk and deer will choose over native species. This brings the wildlife into locations, such as highways or railway tracks, where they are in danger of collision. And where the prey go, so go the predators. On one 45-kilometer stretch of highway through the park the mortality rate was so high we called that portion of the road ‘the meat-maker.'

"Of the many different strategies we have attempted to prevent wildlife mortality," continues Leeson, "we have concluded fences are best—tall fences, 2.4 meters high. But once we've fenced the animals off the road, we've fractured their habitat, and neither the wildlife mortality nor the fragmentation of habitat is acceptable in Canada's oldest national park, which is an international icon of the country's natural heritage."

The solution was to construct 22 wildlife underpasses and two wildlife overpasses on the 45 km of the meat-maker stretch of highway, part of a larger project to widen the road from two lanes to four. The structures have ranged from simple pipe culverts to elaborate overcrossings. Since the first phase of the project was completed in 1996, Parks Canada has recorded 50,000 passages by animals the size of coyotes or larger through these crossings, which means, says Leeson, that virtually all animal species in the habitat of the Bow River valley, where this stretch of highway is located, have used one or more of the crossings. During this time the elk collision rate dropped by 96%, and overall wildlife collisions dropped by 82%.

While the majority of these corridors were constructed so that the wildlife cross underneath the traffic, in two locations where grizzlies and wolves are abundant, over-the-road crossings were constructed. The two $2 million (twice the cost of a typical undercrossing) concrete overcrossings have dirt floors and are vegetated. Since both sides of the crossings are within the park and contain native vegetation, deciding what to plant posed little challenge; however, there were other considerations. "We were concerned about freezing from underneath," says Leeson, "from inside the overpass. We were concerned that salt spray from the highway in winter would reach the overcrossing, and we were concerned about how to accommodate rain and snowmelt. But it turns out that on one of the two overcrossings, our ground and shrub cover has been very vigorous and is establishing more thoroughly and much quicker than I thought it would. And the mortality on the larger species, such as 6- and 7-foot spruce trees and lodgepole pines, has been such that we haven't had to put anything in since 1997. On this overpass we had a lot of very good topsoil, but on the other overpass where this hasn't been the case, the reclamation hasn't been nearly as successful, and the difference has made quite a case for establishing a good seedbed.

"On both structures, we installed special features so we would be able to capture some of that runoff in the soil but also drain overflow that would be excessive for the integrity of the structures."

Although precautions were taken to shield wildlife from the noise and visual distraction of the freeway, animals seemed not to be bothered by either and in fact took to migrating on top of the earth berms installed to protect them from headlights and traffic roar. Echoing Hund in California, Leeson emphasizes the importance of planting land adjacent to any crossing structure to make wildlife feel comfortable approaching it. "One thing we've done to protect small animals like chipmunks and red squirrels is to establish brush piles about every 25 feet along the crossing so the animals can dash from one pile to other, which we've found to be very effective."

Leeson is quick to point out that the success of this kind of project depends on interagency cooperation. "It's federal money. In a national park everything, including the highways, is the responsibility of the federal government, which means Parks Canada is responsible for the project. The dollars came originally to upgrade the highway, and up to this point we've spent $80 million. In the first stage, 16% of the budget went for environmental protection, 20% went to the environment in stage two, and 30% [went to the environment] in stage three. Our success is protecting wildlife, and other natural resources at each stage have made it possible to argue for a bigger budget to do more of this as we proceed. We're just getting ready to start another $50 million section of highway. Three subcommittees have been established: design and construction, environmental and consultation, and communication. Public Works Canada, which is similar to the US Army Corps of Engineers, will do the heavy-duty design contracts, and as chair of the environmental subcommittee, I preside over their work to inform them of the environmental protection imperatives. By fall a year from now, we will have gone through all of the environmental work and prepared an environmental impact statement and environmental planning and will have informed the engineers who will by then have a design to show the public."

South of the Canadian border, another precedent-setting project poses more complicated jurisdictional challenges. Discussions about widening Highway 93 north of Missoula, MT, began in 1985 and included the Montana Department of Transportation (MDT), FHWA, and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes of the Flathead Nation.

"This is a segmented project of over 56 miles," explains Joe Hovenkotter, attorney for the tribes, and all but a quarter-mile of the project is on the Flathead Reservation. The tribes, as owners of the bed and banks of the waters and primary trustees with jurisdictional authority over fish and wildlife, decided to challenge the design MDT had in mind to expand the road. MDOT's preferred alternative was essentially five lanes—a four-lane highway with a continuous left-turn-lane center meridian. The tribes' preference was the existing situation, which did not address the circumstances that growth in the area is occurring at about 2.5% a year with highway growth at the rate of 3% annually. Negotiations came to an impasse in 1998 until FHWA stepped in. Millions already had been spent on an environmental analysis, and the federal government insisted that a solution be reached. The tribes responded by hiring landscaping, administrative, and traffic consultants to put forth an actual vision for the highway. The final design is for a two-, three-, and four-lane configuration, roughly broken down into one-third each, and calls for 42 wildlife crossings in 42 mi. along the 46-mi. stretch from Evaro to Polson, allowing for what Hovenkotter calls "the free flow of natural resources back and forth between the Cabinet Mountains and the Mission Mountains, Glacier National Park, and the Bob Marshall Wilderness." Criteria for placement of the crossings included animal tracking, sightings, and identification of historical game patterns interrupted when the two-lane highway originally was built.

According to the memorandum of agreement signed by the three parties, the wildlife crossings will be landscaped in some cases with wetlands. "This project has substantial wetland impacts," says Mary Price, the tribes' wetland-riparian biologist. "Currently the estimate is that there will be 50 acres of direct wetland impacts resulting from fill material, and the emphasis has been on onsite mitigation within the highway corridor. So to support the function of wildlife crossings and restore hydrological and ecological connectivity across the highway, we have identified 14 sites along the width of the project that we will attempt to restore to their historic condition.

"The existing bridges are very short, for example, and there's a lot of encroachment on the floodplain and riparian areas, so the plans call for replacing these and planting [in] native wetland and riparian areas. A lot of the wildlife crossings are located at streams, so there are also fishery issues, which means that a lot of the crossings will have natural bottoms, not open bottoms, but there will be gravel placed in there and a channel built through for fish passage."

As a state, Florida has led the way in expanding its DOT's responsibilities when it comes to rights of way. "If you're reactive, you lose," says Irwin. "But if you're proactive, you win." One important win the department has scored is connecting the fragmented habitat for the endangered Florida panther (at one time down to a population of approximately 30 animals) and the black bear. Irwin says two important criteria for developing wildlife crossings are for land on either side to be somehow protected from development and for there to be adequate vegetative cover leading up to the crossing. "We have a real problem with exotic invasives," says Irwin, "and in some cases, we've gone through and just removed them from our rights of way so we could plant natives. In one area in the central part of the state, the approach to a crossing was a pasture, so we went back in and reforested the pasture land."

Except for one land bridge built primarily as a greenway hiking trail, all Florida wildlife cross under the road. "We vegetated that bridge in natives indigenous to the area—scrub and pines mainly—because we wanted to give people as much of the experience of hiking as we could," Irwin maintains. "We put a well down that's run on solar to establish the vegetation we planted and in case of drought. The adjacent area contained a lot of endangered plant species, and we had to be mindful of that as well. This area was originally slated for the cross-Florida barge canal, and it was given to us as a greenway." Planners project that while people will use it during the day, there's nothing to keep wildlife from taking over once night falls.

Irwin says the key to avoiding unnecessary expense—and wildlife mortality associated with transportation corridors—is to combine transportation and environmental planning. "Years ago we started building partnerships with what was then called the Florida Game and Freshwater Fish Commission because we wanted to base our decisions on good science," he says, noting years of tracking the Florida panther to determine the best locations for the crossings. "What we've found is that the panthers use the crossings but so do bears, deer, alligators, turkeys—you name it. We've also worked with the [Division] of Forestry on revegetation projects; they do the plan, and we fund the installation of the plant materials."

The pendulum also swings the other way. Although there was no transportation project associated with it, FDOT spent 10 years designing and building two wildlife crossings for deer in the Florida keys and eventually might do a complete habitat conservation plan for the entire two islands.

"We're in the process of revolutionizing how we do our transportation planning in the environmental area," says Irwin. "We're going to be looking at utilizing things like [geographic information systems] and interagency coordination and starting to develop mitigation strategies at the same time we're developing our transportation plan."

Penelope Grenoble O'Malley frequently contributes to Forester Communications magazines.

EC - March/April 2004