Currently I am reading, for the second time, Nature’s Best Hope by Douglas Tallamy. It is a book about the shrinking ability for us as a planet to sustain all the plants and animals that have inhabited Earth for millions of years. Tallamy, however, does not believe it is to late, but we must begin to “re-wild” the planet one backyard at a time. His vision is called “Homegrown National Park” where each one of us is responsible for converting part of our backyard or front yard into a haven for local flora and fauna. Find out what species live in your neck of the woods and provide the type of habitat that they need, its as simple as that. If you want to get sophisticated with this concept you can create habitat for species that you desire to live on your property like monarch butterflies, hummingbirds or a family of foxes.
If we can get enough homeowners to go along with this concept there could eventually be a way to connect these wild areas together and provide “highways” for animals to move about as they please. When animals feel pressure to leave an old area of habitation because of de-foresting or new construction they often do not have a safe path to another sustainable area. Ultimately many of these animals get run over by cars or end up being removed because they become a nuisance to the local community. The problem is, as time goes by, the ability to connect these existing wild areas becomes harder and harder. Land in Knoxville is being developed at an alarming rate and the scarcity of untouched urban wilderness is a growing problem.
Around the world there have been solutions to this problem actually put into implementation. Connectivity is the concept that “connects” these wild areas together to provide a large enough space to sustain the animals that inhabit it. This concept is quickly becoming very important as our local landscape gets divided up and developed day by day. One solution that has been used by environmentalists in San Antonio, Texas and Wierdin, Netherlands is a land bridge. It is a bridge across a road that is naturalized with grass and trees that mimic the surrounding landscape.
The idea is to get the local animals comfortable crossing the bridge to allow them the amount of space needed to remain in that area. Carrying capacity is an important concept that the land bridges provide plenty of for local animals. Two small areas may contain no local animal species because there is simply not enough food, cover or land for them to live, but if you connect 3 or 4 of these small areas together suddenly you have created a sustainable habitat and a living area that animals are not looking to move away from.
I work in Knoxville and Maryville, so I drive down Pellissippi Parkway (I-140), quite often and at all times of the day. I have seen deer jumping a 5ft tall median wall with cars whizzing past at 80 mph. This past fall in particular there were a dozen dead deer between the Northshore exit and the bridge that crosses the lake. The area around this part of Pellissippi Parkway is very unique in that it is like a long, wide isthmus that stretches out towards the lake. The lake makes has a big bend along this stretch that forms the peninsula that has water on both sides and is split almost perfectly in half by the highway.
As you can see from the picture above (area highlighted in yellow) the area in question is rather large but is cut in half by the highway. This addition to the landscape decades ago changed the movement of animals in this area like deer, fox, raccoon, opossum, coyote and turkey. The carrying capacity for this area changed dramatically and is continuing to change as more of this area gets developed. Most of the deer I see on the highway are crossing from South to North and it is pretty obvious why – the area to the North of the highway is relatively undeveloped (and hopefully stays that way). The animals are simply moving from a highly concentrated area with houses, cars and household pets to a lower concentrated area with woods, edge areas where forest and grass fields meet, and a lack of human activity.
There is an existing bridge in this area that could be an option for a land bridge for animals to use while still allowing a “path” for cars to use that have to cross this bridge to get to their home. As you can see from the blown-up image, there are not many homes in this area and very few that have to cross the bridge to get home. This area also has plenty of woods on both sides of the highway for animals to use as cover. As with many of the ideas in Tallamy’s book, Nature’s Best Hope, for this to work there would have to be a collective effort by mostly private land owners to keep this area as undeveloped as possible moving forward. The largest cost of a project like this would be the building of a bridge that crosses a 4 lane interstate, but we already have that part covered in this scenario. The money could be spent on a restoration of the existing bridge and asphalt to a more animal friendly walking surface. Trees, shrubs and grasses would have to be planted to make the land bridge look as natural as possible. A fence would have to be built on both sides of Pellissippi Parkway to “funnel” the animals to the land bridge.
This would be a large undertaking but well worth it when you think of the animal species that could be saved as we move into the future. Imagine how cool it would be to have something like this in our area and the bragging rights we could have over surrounding areas that have not thought about animal conservation in such a serious way. There is no reason why we can’t look at this in the same way South Knoxville looked at developing the Urban Wilderness that so many of us enjoy. The Urban Wilderness required planning, a large budget and the cooperation of private land owners. The Scott Bridge Project would require the same amount of cooperation but is totally achievable.