The initial roadkill reported to Brian DeBolt on South Pass was fairly routine.
A westbound motorist heading toward Farson collided with an elk, which was now dead in the ditch near mile marker 54 of the road that roughly follows the route of the historic Oregon Trail.
“I got a call at like 2 o’clock in the morning,” said DeBolt, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s large carnivore conflict coordinator in Lander. “If it’s dead and it’s off the road, it’s usually not our concern.”
The Wyoming Department of Transportation typically collects carcasses in highway right-of-way, which can accumulate in shocking numbers.
Two days after the early-morning report on August 31, DeBolt received another call about the elk carcass.
“I get another call from our dispatch that a passerby had reported three dead bears,” the officer recalled. “I go up there, and sure enough, there’s a sow and two young cubs, clearly hit by vehicles. I’m sure everything happened at once.”
DeBolt loaded the family of deceased bruins into the bed of his pickup truck. He left the rotting wapiti, which already had three carcasses on board.
Later that evening, the carnivore biologist received another dispatch call: another black bear had been struck and killed near the Highway 28 mile marker.
“I’m like, ‘No, that happened this morning,'” DeBolt said.
However, the dispatcher informed him that the man who struck the bear was present at the time. He called the driver to confirm.
“I went back up there.” Sure enough, another bear was down near the elk carcass,” DeBolt stated. “That time I did go ahead and pick up the elk carcass.”
The fourth bear lured to death by roadside venison in less than 24 hours brought an end to the unusual incident. However, for DeBolt, it served as a reminder of the importance of reporting and cleaning up roadkill that accumulates on Wyoming’s roads on a daily basis.
“It creates a safety hazard, and not only for people,” says DeBolt. “Also, just other animals.”
Although it is uncommon for black bears to be struck while feeding on road-killed carcasses, DeBolt has seen the chain reaction of a collision claim other species in the past.
“It’s mostly coyotes and magpies and ravens and other small scavengers,” according to him.
Many biomass sources attract opportunistic scavengers. The Wyoming chapter of The Nature Conservancy reported in 2022 that wildlife-vehicle collisions doubled over 15 years.
“If we conservatively estimate that the true number of animals hit by vehicles is two times the number counted, then we may be losing 15,000 big-game animals, mostly mule deer, to wildlife–vehicle collisions per year,” Corinna Riginos wrote
A small percentage of road-killed wildlife is publicized. Black bears and grizzlies, including globally famous Grizzly 399, have been the rare exceptions, making headlines after accidents and reminding motorists of the scores of animals killed by vehicles on Wyoming roads each year.
