BONDAD – Three vultures squawk and take flight, circling a hillside boneyard below a pullout off U.S. Highway 550 on Bondad Hill, overlooking the Animas River.
The slope, which sits between Durango and the New Mexico line, is littered with the remains of about a dozen dead ungulates. The makeshift cemetery has become a popular spot to leave roadkill found on that section of highway.
Every year, drivers hit more deer in La Plata County than in any other of Colorado’s 64 counties.
For the last five years, the county has topped the Colorado Department of Transportation’s list for most wildlife collisions. About 90% of those collisions in La Plata County are with deer. In 2022, 213 drivers in the county reported collisions with deer. The accidents injured 25 people that year.
“When you live in areas where you're surrounded by good wildlife populations, and as more and more people are driving … along with that comes the chance of wildlife vehicle collisions,” said John Livingston, spokesman for Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
Although the damage to cars can be extensive, so too is the damage to wildlife. That leaves a question for the CDOT crews that maintain the state’s highways: how should the agency dispose of the deer carcasses?
The menagerie of deer remains off Highway 550 is one such solution, although not a preferred resolve, CDOT spokeswoman Lisa Schwantes said.
“The traditional practice is to dispose of roadkill simply by dragging the carcass off the roadway to an area that can't be seen, typically, from the roadway,” she said. “It could be in a wooded area, also away from any residential areas – we’re very conscientious of that – and then we just let nature take its course with that body decomposing on its own.”
Given dump fees and labor costs, it is cost-prohibitive to haul all the bodies to a local landfill, she said.
Raptors have picked most the carcasses relatively clean, thereby mitigating most risk of water quality contamination.
Although CDOT crews try to spread out the distribution of roadkill carcasses along the section of 550 south of Durango, they struggle at times to find appropriate spots.
“They do try to find other areas to dispose of (carcasses), depending on where the roadkill occurs along the highway from New Mexico state line all the way up to Farmington Hill,” Schwantes said. “But again, it’s difficult, because there’s a lot of residential areas along that rural highway, so that (pullout) is a location that they do utilize quite frequently.”
She said crews had not picked up a carcass in several weeks.
Livingston said drivers who hit and kill animals may in fact harvest and keep the edible parts it, if they so choose. To do so, they should call the local CPW office within 48 hours of the incident. The office may ask to inspect and keep antlers from buck ungulates, as well as other parts of animals such as bears and mountain lions.
CPW’s Durango office, located at 151 E. 16th St., can be reached at 247-0855.
rschafir@durangoherald.com
