Florida detours bears from risky highway : Officials constructed a $1-million underpass to let animals cross safely. The project has sparked an eccentric protest.

Until recently, a short stretch of State Road 46 near here was the deadliest place for Florida’s threatened population of black bears. Crossing the scenic two-lane blacktop highway in search of acorns, blueberries or a mate, the bears too often ended up as road kill.

Since 1976, in fact, more than 20 black bears have died after run-ins with vehicles on Route 46, which bisects the animals’ traditional central Florida range along the Wekiva River, just 25 miles north of Orlando. “It was always sad to go pick one up, to see them splattered like that,” said biologist Jayde Roof. “Especially if there were cubs.”

Now the bears have a way to cross safely, through a wide underpass that cost $1 million to build and has sparked at least one eccentric protest in this bucolic area of tall pines and low human density. Months after the underpass was completed in December 1994, a human dressed in a gorilla suit showed up one night to prance around in front of a flash camera triggered by an infrared beam that was set up to record animal crossings.

The gorilla left a roll of photographic impressions and a sign: “Stop monkeying around with taxpayers’ money.”

Roof, a black bear specialist with the state’s Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission, says the protest was futile; the money had already been spent. And besides, he adds, the underpass is working.

In the past 18 months, no bears have been killed near the culvert under Route 46, which for a mile to the east is flanked with a 10-foot-tall chain-link fence designed to guide the bears to the opening. During the same period, bears have walked through the tunnel at least five times.

The woods on each side of the road have been modified in an effort to help bears find their way to the underpass. Two bear-sized trails were bulldozed through the trees on the south side of the underpass, and on the north side the state forested an open pasture with young pines that would offer the animals some cover.

An estimated 1,500 black bears survive in Florida’s wilds, from cypress marshes west of the Everglades to deep woods in the Panhandle. They are reclusive animals and, Roof says, “most people are surprised to learn that there are any bears in Florida.”

When they are seen, they can cause a commotion. Last month, a young male emerged from the woods near Lake Mary, climbed a tree within sight of motorists on Interstate 4 and within minutes caused a convergence of television satellite trucks and an 8-mile traffic backup. Game commission supervisor Tom Shupe fired a tranquilizer dart into the bear’s rump, but the injection did not take and the bear only climbed higher.

Eventually, Shupe says, the crowd dispersed, night fell and the bear returned to the woods.

According to biologists, that adventurer is one of 100 or more bears roaming an area that extends from Ocala National Forest down to Rock Springs Run State Reserve, south of Route 46. That represents the biggest concentration of bears in the state, and after completing a two-year study in which he captured 43 of the animals and fitted them with tiny radio collars to track their movements, Roof says the Wekiva River population is flourishing.

Indeed, the population may even be growing. In the 1980s, after years in which bear habitat was turned into residential neighborhoods, the state began to spend $60 million to buy woodlands that now total 50,000 acres in the Wekiva River region. Laws to protect the bears have caused plans for several luxury housing tracts to be scrapped.

In addition to saving the lives of bears, the underpass has allowed scientists to study the movements of other forest creatures. Every third day, Parks Small, a biologist with the Florida Park Service, puts new film in the camera and records the tracks left in the sandy soil of the underpass.

The crossing is commonly used by armadillos, bobcats, opossum, rabbits and fox. Even snakes, gopher tortoises and moles have passed through, he says.

Small and Roof expect bear traffic under Route 46 to pick up this fall, as the animals begin to forage more widely for food and figure out the safe way to get to the other side of the road.

“I still hear about a lot of people who look at the underpass and say, ‘That’s a lot of expense to save a few bears,’ ” Roof said.

“But what if you’re going down Highway 46 and a 500-pound bear runs out in front of your Honda? So even if you don’t care about animals, there’s a safety feature there.”