Paranoia = Freedom In Idaho

In south-eastern Idaho an effort to build a wildlife crossing over a busy highway was stopped by fierce local opposition.  Just a few hundred locals spurred on by a local right wing/libertarian opinion writer in a free local “newspaper” stopped a life saving wildlife crossing.  Crossing like the one proposed for Targhee Pass are being built in many western states.  They save both wildlife and humans.

That trend is driven by financial motives as well as ecological ones. Collisions not only kill valuable game animals, they often result in property damage and even hospital bills. Marcel Huijser, a research ecologist at the Western Transportation Institute, has estimated that each North American deer crash costs society around $6,600, elk $17,500, and moose more than $30,000. Virtually every Western state has jumped on the crossing bandwagon…

The Idaho crossing project was abandoned because the locals apparently believe that they have a God given right to their scenic views and personal use of public lands. Of course, there is also the uniquely right-wing belief that the government is always lying about its motivation and is really working to restrict the rights of “real American.”

Often, unfounded speculation stoked the argument’s flames. Throughout 2017, the Island Park News reposted articles by Karen Schumacher, a blogger for right-wing sites like Redoubt News and Gem State Patriot. Schumacher, who had roots in Island Park, asserted that the overpasses were a red herring: The structures, she wrote, were insidious tools for the dispossession of private property, the vanguard of a “systematic agenda to alter where and how we live.”

So, the wildlife crossing near Targhee Pass is dead. Just as will be lots animals who try and cross the busy highway and not incidentally some humans who don’t survive those wildlife vs auto encounters.