This presentation will discuss wildlife crossing opportunities anticipated to be included within the forthcoming reauthorization of the current federal transportation law, known as the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act (FAST Act), which expires on September 30, 2021.
Although it is impossible to predict the law’s final content at this time, the conventional wisdom is that it will include a number of wildlife-related provisions, consistent with both the House and Senate bills that were passed last year by the Transportation & Infrastructure and Environment & Public Works committees, respectively.
Although their approaches differed, both prior bills included – for the first time ever – dedicated funding for wildlife crossing structures. In particular, the Senate bill from the 116th Congress established a 5-year, $250 million competitive Wildlife Crossing Pilot grant program that would fund wildlife infrastructure projects aimed at reducing wildlife-vehicle collisions and improving connectivity, with 60% of funding going to projects located in rural areas. In contrast, the House bill from the last Congress would have allocated a total of $300 million in National Highway Performance Program funds over 4 years for projects and strategies to reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions (WVCs) or to restore and maintain connectivity among terrestrial or aquatic habitats affected by roads.
In addition to funding, the talk will also highlight other wildlife-related provisions included in the final law. Again, while the content is unknown at this time, during the prior Congress, these shared provisions included the addition of projects and strategies designed to reduce WVCs to the list of projects eligible for funding under the existing Surface Transportation Block Grant Program, the Bridge Improvement Program, and the Nationally Significant Freight & Highway Program, as well as other common provisions.