PARK CITY — Shauna Hart, a conservation photographer, was out early in the morning this past fall, driving along state Route 224 in Summit County when she saw blood on the road.
“You could tell school traffic had started again,” she said. Hart was in the car with Erin Ferguson, president of Save People Save Wildlife, a nonprofit advocacy organization based in Summit County.
The two women were on the lookout for wildlife along the road as bus and commuter traffic became more dense. They saw a coyote along the fence line and a red-tailed hawk.
There was also a late-born fawn in a grassy area who had the “zoomies,” Hart said. “It was the cutest thing — it was running back and forth and back and forth” near its mother.
And then they saw blood on the road. Pulling around, Ferguson and Hart encountered the carcass of an elk that had been hit just recently.
“Your heart starts beating because — I’ve seen, unfortunately, so many dead carcasses. It still makes me sad every single time,” Hart said. Within days, the mother deer and fawn were also found dead on the side of the road.
Ferguson hopped out of the car, “bent over that elk and she just started crying and she put her hand on the elk,” Hart recalled, saying it was an emotional moment for them both.
The Utah Department of Transportation identified that section of SR 224 as the fifth-worst in Utah for vehicle wildlife collisions, but the plan to build a wildlife crossing there fell apart earlier this year.
This month, one of the photographs Hart took won the Judges Choice Award in the 2025 Conservation category in a contest set forth by the North American Nature Photography Association.
“For the issue of wildlife crossings in that area to be validated by a very respected organization means the world to me,” Hart said. “Maybe this photo will spark change, maybe someone else will see it. Maybe this story could make a difference.”
Hart and many others have been working in the lead-up to Utah’s 2025 legislative session, advocating for increased wildlife crossing protections, particularly around hot spots where wildlife collisions occur.
Fences and highways trace every section of the western U.S., and when they come together, the two cause serious problems for all types of animals, according to Nicki Frey, a wildlife biology professor at Southern Utah University.
Migratory animals like antelope, deer, elk and moose, Frey said, “can navigate fences, and they can navigate highways, but when you have a fence and a highway together, which is everywhere, that’s a problem.”
The wider the road, the more dangerous it can be for people and animals in frequented areas like SR-224 in Summit County. “We know that these highways are causing serious problems for migration,” according to Frey.
The animals can get stuck along the fence line and are prevented from traveling to more suitable climates in winter. “They’re either not able to migrate, which is going to cause a genetic problem later, or they have to try to migrate across the highway — and they’re getting annihilated,” she said.
Human impacts are also significant. Vehicle collisions with large animals are dangerous and cause an estimated $130 million in damages — a high cost to taxpayers every year, according to Isobel Lingenfelter, who works as a connectivity coordinator for the Utah Wildlife Federation, bringing together groups from all walks, who want to see a reduction in collisions statewide.
One effective solution to the problem has been the construction of wildlife crossings. The simplest is jump-outs, which is a dirt ramp with gaps in fencing, common along large roadways.
Culverts and underpasses can be used for anything from turtles to elk, Frey says. And in the last two decades, overpasses have been employed, with Utah leading the way.
“When you have the whole system working together, it reduces wildlife-vehicle collisions by 90%,” Lingenfelter said.
A House resolution was passed unanimously in 2020, which encourages municipal, county and state governments to support wildlife connectivity while reducing wildlife-vehicle collisions. “That was kind of how things kicked off,” according to Lingenfelter.
Twenty million dollars was allocated toward wildlife crossings in 2023, and now a bipartisan group representing conservation organizations, hunting groups, government organizations and two tribal nations are working to secure a permanent fund, built on the rise of data supporting the economic and environmental benefits of these crossings.
Lingenfelter’s connectivity working group met with legislators and government department leaders earlier this month to discuss the flow of future project monies. “We’re trying to establish this permanent fund so that (the Utah Department of Transportation) has reliability in their long-term planning,” Lingenfelter said.
“To be honest, I think that UDOT is ahead of the curve,” Frey said. “We are a leader in the West, which is really exciting and really cool.”
“It really is picking up momentum as people are realizing how frequently the animals are using it and how much carnage we’re saving with human lives and wildlife,” she said.
Data is leveraged from better GPS collar technology the Division of Wildlife is using to track migration, reports from citizens involved in collisions, insurance companies, highway patrol encounters and volunteers are helping provide a full picture of the problem statewide. Still, collisions are underreported, with data on smaller animal species virtually non-existent.
Much is resting on the upcoming decision to allocate money toward these crossings, Hart says. On SR-224, for example, the four lanes are planned to expand to six for buses, increasing risk in an area with many collisions.
But the future of the federal pilot program, which helped fund the overpass at Parleys Summit and others, is in question.
“The intent was to keep it going,” Frey said, and she knows many who have submitted applications for grants, but “we’ll see with the cost savings that are proposed or suggested with the next administration.”
As the Olympics approach, the state must find a solution to avoid dead animals on the road during an international event, Hart argues.
With the high effectiveness of these solutions, and the ability to save Utahn’s millions, “there’s major bipartisan support,” at the state level, according to Lingenfelter.
“We can’t keep going forward and doing the same thing and expecting different results,” Hart says. “The increase in people and traffic in cars is going to increase exponentially the amount of dead wildlife.”
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