I-90 Expansion Project Brings Opportunity to CWU

In 2010, construction on widening 15 miles of Interstate 90 from four lanes to six lanes from Snoqualmie Pass to Easton is slated to begin. The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) is coordinating the project currently funded at more than $500 million. Several safety, economic, and environmental concerns will be addressed, including the reduction of avalanche closures, increased capacity, stabilization of slopes, enhancement of freight mobility, replacement of deteriorating pavement, improvement of sight distance, and improved environmental stewardship. Environmental stewardship is of great interest to CWU's Department of Biological Sciences and other campus units and as a result, they have chosen to be involved.

Habitat along this stretch of I-90 represents some of the only corridors for movement of wildlife along the north-south axis of the Washington Cascades. The current four-lane highway already reduces wildlife movement, and six lanes will only increase the problem of reduced connectivity and gene flow. A collaboration among WSDOT, a number of other state and federal agencies, and environmental organizations has led to a plan that will make this stretch of highway much less of a barrier for both terrestrial and aquatic organisms. Plans have been made to include a number of wildlife bridges and underpasses designed to allow and encourage animals to cross safely over and under the highway.

In order to determine how successful these wildlife structures will be, biological research will need to be done. Initial efforts will be directed at determining the pre-construction population sizes and movement patterns of the terrestrial and aquatic species in the project area. Similar field research will continue into the future to determine the extent to which animals use the crossing structures post-construction. While the primary questions will revolve around use of crossing structures, direct and indirect funding will allow many other ecological and evolutionary questions to be addressed. Much of this research will be based at CWU and carried out by CWU faculty and students. This could lead to CWU becoming a center for research in the growing subdisciplines of road ecology and biological connectivity.

Dr. Robert Long, a new faculty member in CWU's Department of Biological Sciences, will coordinate initial organization of these research efforts. Dr. Long comes to us most recently from the Vermont Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at the University of Vermont where he received his Ph.D. studying the movement patterns of black bears, fishers, and bobcats throughout Vermont. Other Biology faculty members who have expressed interest in becoming involved in I-90 research are: Drs. Beck, Cottrell, Ernest, James, J. Johnson, and Wagner.

For more information about Biology's involvement, please contact Dr. Robert Long via email longr@cwu.edu or any of the above faculty.

For more general information regarding the I-90 project, please see:

http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Projects/I90/SnoqualmiePassEast

http://www.i90wildlifebridges.org

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connelly/274161_joel16.html

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/transportation/227961_bridge10.html