De Anza College researchers and students are working to make sure that wildlife and people can coexist in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
The Kirsch Center for Environmental Studies at De Anza College will launch a new study on Jan. 1 to assess the best location for a wildlife corridor near the Highway 17 summit. The project runs in parallel with wildlife movement studies in Coyote Valley, a wilderness area that connects the Santa Cruz Mountains with the Diablo Range.
“Our worry is that the Santa Cruz Mountains will become isolated,” said Julie Phillips, project manager for the wildlife stewardship team.
When highways are built through wilderness areas like the Santa Cruz Mountains, they can act as barriers to wildlife movement. The wilderness areas then become fragmented into smaller patches of land that can no longer support large mammals that need wide expanses of land for foraging and breeding.
Many of the animals that live in the Santa Cruz Mountains, like mountain lions, black tail deer and bobcats, need wide spaces, Phillips said. Building a corridor would provide a bridge between wilderness areas and helps prevent fragmentation.
Corridors are important not only for the large mammals, but also for small animals like rabbits and salamanders, said David Johnston with the California Department of Fish and Game.
“It takes them multiple generations to move long distances, but you still need broad connectivity and enough habitat to support those animals,” he said.
Highway 17 has particularly tall crash barriers, to keep cars from careening over the edge or crashing head-on while they travel the steep and curvy roadway, and this may prove to be a problem for wildlife movement, said Johnson.
“Whether Highway 17 is a barrier to movement or whether the wildlife are dealing with it is the issue,” Johnson said.
While the crash barriers might cause problems, Johnson also believes that wildlife movement is possible in the narrow patches of the highway. Animals may also cross at night when the highway is not heavily traveled, he said.
The new Highway 17 project is based largely on wildlife corridor work in the Coyote Valley region, a 7,000 acre parcel of land in the southern San Jose region. The De Anza College wildlife stewardship team has been tracking animals in the Coyote Valley region for 18 months, investigating fragmentation caused by Highway 101.
The valley has been deemed a biodiversity hotspot, according to Phillips, with 160 species of birds, including hawks, golden and bald eagles and short eared owls that hadn”t been seen in the area for years. The team has also spotted elk herds, coyotes, mountain lions, badgers, bobcats and deer.
Phillips believes all the animals the team sees in Coyote Valley are also found in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
To track animals movements, the students use infrared cameras, GPS units and other wildlife tracking techniques.
They”ve found that Coyote Valley animals are using culverts to get past the highways, Phillips said. But their long-term vision is to build a bridge modeled after the one at Banff National Park in Canada that allows wildlife to cross over the roadway unharmed.
The Highway 17 study is part of a five-year effort and a greater 50-year project investigating wildlife corridors in the area.