Stronger Tollway Fences Considered to Deter Wildlife

Officials may spend $250,000 to install stronger fencing along a stretch of the new Eastern toll road where cars have killed deer and other animals.

But the agency running the toll road has not yet decided it needs to raise the fence height from 6 feet to 8 feet. Some wildlife experts say a higher fence could keep deer from darting across the highway and endangering themselves and drivers.

Some environmentalists, meanwhile, are skeptical that the alterations will really deter wildlife from attempting to leap the fence onto the road.

At least five deer and seven coyotes died on the Eastern Transportation Corridor during the three weeks after its mid-October opening, stirring doubts whether wild animals are using special tunnels built to guide them under the highway’s six lanes.

The $765-million road slices through a major nature preserve and other wild land in a dramatic, canyon-filled region rich with wildlife. Long before the toll road was built, biologists and environmentalists raised concerns that animals accustomed to roaming the region would be killed crossing the road.

Toll-road builders lined both sides of the 17-mile road with fencing that is generally 6 feet high, with the lower portion made of mesh and the upper portion strung with strands of wire.

Now the agency’s environmental staff is recommending adding mesh to the upper portion of fencing on both sides of a 6 1/2-mile stretch of highway from the Santiago Creek bridge to the Riverside Freeway--the same stretch where most wildlife fatalities have occurred.

That recommendation will go to a toll road agency committee on Wednesday, with the cost of fence alterations estimated at $19,000 a mile. The agency is also convening a group to plan a large-mammal study.

“The biologists saw evidence of animals getting through the flat-wire area,” said agency spokeswoman Lisa Telles. Some even suspect deer may be squeezing through the fence’s upper portion, she said.

She did not rule out making the fence taller, but said, “We’re going to continue to watch it and put this measure in place.”

She added: “Hopefully, this whole thing was isolated, and we won’t have any more occurrences.”

Others want a taller fence, including environmental leader Elisabeth Brown of Laguna Beach, a board member of the Nature Reserve of Orange County, which operates the wilderness preserve crossed by the road.

“They ought to be taller,” she said. “If you’re trying to do something for the reserve, which is on either side, you want the [fence] to be a block.”

She hypothesized that toll road officials are reluctant to install higher, more obvious fences for fear of marring the view of wild lands for highway drivers.

“They really resist, because they want people to enjoy the view,” Brown said.

Dan Silver, coordinator of the Los Angeles-based Endangered Habitats League, is also unenthusiastic about the planned fence alterations.

“They’re trying to make people think they’re making it right, but it’s not right,” Silver said.

Toll road officials also have been studying how to lure more animals through five wildlife crossings, or underpassings, to avoid further deer deaths. While they earlier stocked the crossings with alfalfa in hopes of attracting deer, they removed the alfalfa bales after a state deer official said it could sicken wild deer and because the animals did not appear to be using it.

“If any deer did get to it, they didn’t consume enough to hurt them,” Telles said. But supplies of water and salt licks remain at the crossings to give animals more impetus to use them.