For more than a decade, Nova Simpson, Northern Nevada Biological Supervisor at the Nevada Department of Transportation, has been hard at work spearheading efforts to reduce motorist crashes involving wildlife while improving habitat connectivity both within her home State of Nevada as well as more broadly with the U.S. and Canada. Simpson obtained her M.S. in Environmental Sciences at the University of Nevada Reno while studying the newly constructed crossing on US 93. After graduation, Simpson began working for NDOT as an Environmental Scientist and has been involved in all of the wildlife mitigation projects around the state that address large species throughout the implementation process including early planning, agency coordination, research, and education outreach.
Early planning: Simpson served as an internal champion, securing support for a statewide analysis to identify, assess and prioritize animal-vehicle collision hot spots. Using safety, crash and ecological data, the assessment identified priority mitigation sites on a district-by-district basis and provided district staff additional tools to quickly review and integrate their priority assessment sites into project planning.
Agency Coordination & Partnerships: Simpson was instrumental in planning and executing the Nevada DOT’s 2019 Wildlife Considerations in Transportation Planning: A Summit on Communications and Planning for Private and Public Developments. Attended by more than 90 stakeholders representing 47 different agencies, organizations and interest groups, participants identified more than 30 opportunities for early coordination for wildlife corridors, land use, and transportation planning. The summit also led to the formation of a Desert Tortoise Ecological Task Force that is working to improve safe passage for tortoises in Nevada, California, Utah and Arizona.
Research: Simpson has coordinated multiple projects investigating mitigation methods for large mammals moving through Nevada's landscape. Besides the wildlife crossings she has helped sponsor and monitored, she also developed two innovative projects developing Roadside Animal Detection Systems. The first involved a UNR/UCD partnership looking at LiDAR as a useful tool for detecting and classifying wild horses approaching roadways. The second built on the first and included radar, thermal and optical sensors and artificial-intelligence classification of animals in the road.
Education: Simpson has contributed to the development and dissemination of Critter Crossings in the Classroom as part of an initiative to integrate “Project Based Learning” (PBL) into the Nevada classroom curriculum. The module culminated in staff from NDOT visiting the class to talk about “critter crossings” in Nevada, and to review the students’ work as a way to encourage student exploration of STEM.
Implementation: Chief among Simpson’s on-the-ground projects was her work as the lead biologist on a series of multi-faceted structures over US 93 and I-80, including the construction of 5 wildlife overpasses, 4 wildlife underpasses, close to 30 miles of connective fencing, plus the integration of 4 existing vehicular underpasses that today serve as multi-use crossings for both motorists and wildlife. Avoiding typical bridge designs, NDOT employed innovative, wildlife-friendly construction methods to reduce costs and construction time while also maximizing wildlife usage and acceptance.