A mule deer struck and killed by a vehicle on Highway 89 in Paradise Valley, Mont., March 25, 2025.Blakeley Adkins/Greater Yellowstone Coalition
By Kylie Mohr,Big Sky Country Contributing Parks EditorApril 4, 2025
At first sight, Highway 89 in Montana doesn’t look dangerous. It’s bucolic: horses and cattle graze near the road, the Yellowstone River winds in and out of sight, and the Absaroka Mountains rise sharply to the east. But with alarming frequency, this two-lane highway en route to Yellowstone National Park becomes a bloody mess when wildlife cross the road.
Wildlife-vehicle collisions on this stretch of highway between Livingston and Yellowstone’s north entrance in Gardiner, one of the park’s five entrances and the only one that stays open year-round, have cost drivers $32 million in damages over the past 10 years, according to a coalition called Yellowstone Safe Passages. Yellowstone Safe Passages is made up of residents of the Upper Yellowstone watershed, as well as state and federal agencies, elected officials, conservation groups, landowners and more.
About half the accidents here are wildlife-related, which is 10 times higher than the national average. Every year, there are at least 160 wildlife-vehicle collisions, with several times more going unreported, experts say.
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That’s bad for the nearly 1,700 deer, elk, moose and more that have ended up splattered on the side of the road between 2012 and 2023. It’s also expensive for humans, including both locals and tourists. According to a highway assessment by Yellowstone Safe Passages, the average collision costs for deer, elk and moose are $14,014, $45,445, and $82,646, respectively.
“We want you to get to Yellowstone safely; we want you to get your kids home from school safely,” said Blakeley Adkins, a conservation associate with the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, an environmental nonprofit group in the region.
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Adkins and other Yellowstone Safe Passages staff do weekly roadkill surveys to assess the damage, driving up and down this stretch, often in the early evening hours when wildlife are the most active, and recording what they see near the road — dead and alive.
They’ve found carcasses of pretty much every animal that lives here: bison, mountain lions, bobcats, grizzly bears, beavers, moose, skunks, coyotes, birds of prey like eagles and owls, and more. The survey work can be hard on those who do it, especially when they find animals that can’t outrun cars.
“That beaver didn’t stand a chance,” Adkins said. Deer and elk are the most common victims.
The valley is the “perfect storm” for roadkill, said Daniel Anderson, a Montana resident who co-founded Yellowstone Safe Passages. Anderson knows the area well, growing up on a family ranch in the nearby Tom Miner Basin, which borders Yellowstone National Park.
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Wildlife here is sandwiched between two mountain ranges, drawn to irrigated agricultural land with plenty of grass and alfalfa to eat. Animals also come to drink at the Yellowstone River, which winds on both sides of the road. “The highway runs right through all of that,” Adkins said. Both Adkins and Anderson were passengers in vehicles that hit wildlife in this area when they were younger.
More and more people have come to Yellowstone in recent years. The park’s visitation increased by 20% between 2014 and 2017. Almost 400,000 vehicles entered the park through the Gardiner entrance (driving Highway 89 to get there) in 2023. More people mean more cars on the road, and more opportunities for a collision.
A highway assessment identified seven hot spots for vehicle-wildlife collisions, each 2 to 3 miles long, as targets of additional infrastructure improvements. The worst is a spot near Dome Mountain, where the highway narrows into the Yankee Jim Canyon. Irrigated land draws deer and elk close to the road, and to the east, a 3,770-acre wildlife management area is home to even more ungulates, such as bighorn sheep.
After four years of building community support and collecting data, Yellowstone Safe Passages won state funding in September 2024 to conduct an engineering feasibility study near Dome Mountain for the project’s crown jewels: two wildlife crossings.
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Wildlife crossings, which include overpasses and underpasses to help animals safely cross roads, have gained steam in recent years. The world’s biggest wildlife crossing is under construction in Agoura Hills, California, where a first layer of soil was placed over the crossing’s surface Monday. Wyoming has also been a leader in wildlife crossings, and additional projects are underway in Florida, Utah, Washington and many more states.
In Montana, engineers are now studying factors that will influence future wildlife crossing construction projects, including the soil, hydrology and topography of the sites under consideration.
In total, the crossings, plus fencing to funnel animals toward and away from them, are expected to cost $38 million. Wildlife crossing construction in other states in the past has depended on the federal government for about 80% of the cost, Anderson said, with private philanthropy and nongovernmental organizations chipping in for the rest.
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Any construction is likely still years away. In the meantime, signs warn drivers to slow down. Visitors leaving through the Gardiner entrance of Yellowstone are greeted by elk herds calmly sitting 10 feet off the road and a sign, in all caps, saying, “BISON ON THE ROAD NEXT 5 MILES.”
Anderson and Adkins hope the landscape bordering Yellowstone National Park will, in some ways, sell itself. “People come here to see wildlife,” Anderson said. “Not to hit it.”
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April 4, 2025
Big Sky Country Contributing Parks Editor
Exposing the Big Game 
I certainly hope they can do this. I’m amazed, because usually the mindset is set in stone out in those states, and unchangeable. I hope that after even Grizzly 399 was run down and killed, that finally something like this can be done.