Anchorage Daily News

It's that time of year. Somewhere on Southcentral Alaska's roads, a couple times a day, a thousand pounds or more of moose wanders out of the darkness and into the path of a few thousand pounds of motorized metal.

Moose loses. Motorist loses.

Dark days, deep snow and busy roads usually make December and January the most treacherous time of the year for moose-vehicle accidents in Anchorage, the Mat-Su and the Kenai Peninsula. It's been that way for decades, and likely will stay that way for decades more.

Have things improved? Yes and no.

"No," said Gary Olson, chairman and founder of the Alaska Moose Federation, a nonprofit group that pushes for healthy moose populations and improvements in the way people get along with them.

Special moose fencing and better lighting installed along some stretches of the Glenn Highway between Muldoon and Eagle River in 1986 have made things remarkably safer there. But where the fence ends and visibility drops, the accidents pick up again. Surging human population growth throughout Southcentral only makes matters worse.

"It's real predictable," said Rick Sinnott, Anchorage area biologist for the state Department of Fish and Game. "The roads where most of the collisions seem to be are the commuter roads ... where you've got moose on both sides of the road and people traveling 45 or 50 (mph)."

In Anchorage, the top 10 hot spots for moose-vehicle problems start with a 1 ¾-mile stretch of Rabbit Creek Road on the Hillside and a little more than a mile of Tudor Road between Boniface and Muldoon, according to a Department of Transportation analysis of crashes from 1998 through 2002.

Seventeen moose-car crashes occurred on Rabbit Creek Road between Wildien Drive and Goldenview Drive, and 21 on the Tudor Road stretch. Parts of Minnesota Drive, and O'Malley, DeArmoun, Huffman, Abbott Loop and Sand Lake roads fill out the list, along with nonfenced stretches of the Glenn.

WELL-KNOWN HAZARD AREAS

In the Mat-Su, "one of the real bad ones is Knik-Goose Bay Road from Wasilla to Mile 12, Knik Lake," said Fish and Game's Nick Cassara. "That's a bad spot because when the snow gets deep and the moose tend to move down into Big Lake and the Palmer Hay Flats, they end up crossing back and forth over that road all winter long to feed in Big Lake or the hay flats.

"The result of the Big Lake burn is you have fantastic moose habitat there, a big moose magnet. But if the snow gets too deep it will push them out of the burn ... and they'll move down to the hay flats. Then it will thaw and they'll decide it's a good time to go back to Big Lake."

On the Kenai, "I can tell you historically any of the areas most heavily traveled ... some would be between Soldotna and Sterling, Soldotna and Kenai, and K-Beach (Kalifornsky) Road," said Larry Lewis, another Fish and Game biologist. "That's just because of the sheer volume of traffic in the most developed areas."

In December, Lewis said, "I had 27 moose killed and recovered. That doesn't include unreported accidents, or accidents that occurred because people trying to avoid a moose (succeeded) ... but were involved in an accident anyway."

A press release put out by Fish and Game and the Transportation Department earlier in the week said 121 moose were killed on roadways in the Mat-Su from July through December of 2006. On the Kenai 138 moose died in the same time frame, and 90 in Anchorage. The biologists, and state studies, show most of those accidents occur in the winter commuting hours.

"It's more on work days than weekends, more in the morning," Sinnott said. "It's when people are driving to work."

Scott Thomas, DOT's regional traffic engineer in Southcentral, tracks moose crashes. He says the fencing put up along the Glenn Highway when the road was widened 20 years ago "has reduced collisions on the range of 80 to 90 percent. And the fenced areas also have lighting -- there's good visibility" with broad brush-free areas on either side of the road.

Things fall apart when you get closer to Eagle River, though. "The hard part is trying to figure out what happens at Hiland Road," Thomas said.

Breaks in the fencing start around the National Guard Armory on Fort Richardson and on to the Eagle River bridge. "That's a stretch we don't seem to be finished with," he said. "We want to seek funding for a project there, for sure."

At the Hiland Road interchange, "the topography changes," Thomas said. The ground isn't flat, the roadside isn't as clear, there are ditches and steep banks.

"It's not an easy solution."

FENCING IS EFFECTIVE

Olson, the moose federation chairman, is pushing for highway designs that keep moose and vehicles apart. Fencing probably is the best and, in the long run, the least expensive, he said.

"That fencing will last a long time, so it's a wise investment," he said, adding that he realizes state road dollars are limited. Olson suggested putting wildlife corridors higher on the state's federal funding priority list.

"That fencing is a really good tool that works in your heavily saturated areas," he said.

Fencing doesn't work everywhere, though, Thomas said. A lot of the roads on the high collision list are intersected by other roads and drives. You can't fence those completely off. And even on freeways where fencing could be built, some kind of crossing like the underpass at Ship Creek on the Glenn would have to be built to allow moose to get from one side to the other.

Olson points to another "alarming stat" in the state reports that show about 50 percent of the moose killed in highway accidents are cows and about 40 percent are calves.

Consider, the federation's Web site says, that a cow gives birth to about 19 calves in 14 years, and that half of those calves are cows that would similarly reproduce. It's easy to see that the loss of one cow can have a cascading effect on the population.

In any event, more moose are likely to come to town anytime Southcentral gets heavy snowfall.

Sinnott says moose draw the line when snow gets to be about three feet deep. "When you get heavy snow like this, especially, and it's hitting the upper limits where they're comfortable ... more moose come in from the mountains," he said.

"They have to conserve every ounce of energy they can until spring," Olson said, and it's a lot easier to travel over the plowed streets and groomed trails people use than postholing through drifts at higher elevations.

Sliding into a moose usually kills or critically injures the animal, but the accident also does thousands of dollars of damage to vehicles, injures people and occasionally kills a driver or passenger. The biologists recommend slowing down, staying alert and keeping headlights wiped clean.

"A lot of times when people hit them, the moose is moving fast and coming out from a driveway or behind a car," Sinnott said.

Daily News reporter Don Hunter can be reached at dhunter@adn.com.

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