Save People Save Wildlife President Erin Ferguson said the silhouettes are to increase driver awareness of animals that frequently migrate across the roadways.
Her organization got the approval it needed to install them at the Cutter Lane intersection from the Bear Hollow and Ranch Place homeowners’ associations this week.
She said she hopes it will help keep animals, and humans, safer, but it’s not a perfect solution.
“This is a Band-Aid until we get real, permanent wildlife mitigation,” Ferguson said.
She said, ideally, state Route 224 would get wildlife overpasses, which she noted would be great for recreationists too.
“We just don't have the funds to do heroic things at this point,” she said.
So they’ve looked elsewhere for creative solutions. The reflective animals were first implemented by Jackson, Wyoming, which partnered with local artist Bland Hoke.
Hoke’s two reflective moose are going in just before Memorial Day weekend, and Ferguson said she hopes tourists will take notice.
They will be the third and fourth silhouettes going in on state Route 224. Save People Save Wildlife previously donated two deer silhouettes to the Swaner EcoPreserve.
Ferguson said two more are coming soon. Those elk silhouettes will go in across from McPolin Farm after the construction is complete.
She said McPolin Farm’s elk move like clockwork.
“They love to bed down in that field by St. Mary's, in the evening in the winter,” Ferguson said. “And then in the morning, they go over, across the way, to eat and roam around on that Quarry Mountain side.”
It’s a pattern that makes for morning commute delays at best and serious accidents at worst.
At Cutter Lane, where the new silhouettes were installed, moose are the main concern. Ferguson said half a dozen have died there recently, so they’re doing what they can.
