Eastern Tollway Is Still Bedeviled by Animal Kills

Deer, coyotes and other animals continue to die on the new Eastern toll road, prompting toll road officials to ask for more money to strengthen fences along the route.

At least 30 animals, including one mountain lion, have been struck and killed by traffic on the road since it opened in October. The 17-mile road bisects a 37,000-acre wildlife preserve created to protect rare animals and plants. Environmentalists and others long opposed to the road say the losses prove their worst fears.

“It’s depressing,” said Claire Schlotterbeck of Brea, president of the group that helped create Chino Hills State Park. “It’s proof positive of how ill-conceived it is to cut through undeveloped open space with a road.”

The animal deaths have been used as ammunition by environmentalists backing a bill introduced this year by Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) that would ban new roads in state parks. At a hearing at the state Capitol last week, environmentalists pointed to animal kills as evidence of the damage a road inflicts, even when the road’s builders try to compensate.

Five wildlife undercrossings were built along the road in an effort to prevent such killings, but toll road officials admit they are still struggling to keep animals off the six-lane, 65-mph highway.

Soon after the road opened, toll-road officials scrambled to strengthen fences after five deer and seven coyotes were killed in three weeks.

Board members agreed to spend $250,000 to raise the mesh fencing on both sides of a 6 1/2-mile stretch. That work, from the Santiago Creek bridge to the Riverside Freeway, was completed late last month.

The project extended the height of the mesh fencing in that area to 6 feet. Caltrans regulations require 3 feet of mesh fencing in rural areas, topped with an additional 3 feet of horizontal wire.

But animals are still dying on the road. Seven deer, five coyotes, five bobcats and a mountain lion have died since that work was approved. At least one of those casualties, a bobcat, managed to get through the newly strengthened fence.

No people have been injured in the accidents so far, toll road officials said, although one car that hit a deer last fall flipped over.

Lisa Telles, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Corridor Agencies, the public agency that has built 51 miles of toll road in Orange County, said officials have no plans to do additional work on the highway segment where work was just completed. Additional funds, to be requested from the toll authority board in May, would go to tackle other problem spots, including a deer crossing near the junction of the Foothill and Eastern toll roads.

Officials are still planning what steps to take at these locations and how much they will cost. Measures being considered include raising fencing as high as 10 feet in places and topping some segments with barbed wire.

“We don’t want animals or any people to get hurt on the road,” Telles said. “Our challenge has been to balance a lot of things, and we’re taking another look at what we can do to prevent these deaths.”

Still unclear is how well the five wildlife undercrossings are working. Toll road officials plan to install cameras in the tunnels under the $765-million road by month’s end in order to more closely study the animals’ behavior.

Environmentalists say the 12 deer, 12 coyotes, five bobcats and one mountain lion already dead are signs that efforts to keep animals off the road were not enough.

“Animals are creatures of habit,” Schlotterbeck said. “They cross where they always cross, and if there is a new road or a new fence, they’ll still try to get across any way they can.”

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Fence Failure

Toll Road officials are asking for funds to make protective wildlife fences stronger and taller along the Eastern Toll Road