Impact Protein: There are a myriad of federal, state, and local rules when it comes to dealing with roadkill. In 2004, Maryland did a survey of several states and provinces regarding how they manage carcass disposal...the responses are all over the map. And let's not forget that there's more to consider than just the big carcasses. Pulling a paragraph from this quirky article on the topic...
In a Rapid City, S.D., gallery, a fellow told me in a hushed voice about harvesting quills from road-killed porcupines to make jewelry. Like many people I met along the way, he was reluctant to speak openly about his scavenging. Federal and state laws prohibit collection of certain animals, from the road or otherwise. Unless you’re a Native American with a religious permit, it’s illegal to possess an eagle feather. If you hit a deer in Arizona, you can salvage the meat, but in Oregon it’s illegal.
This winter in Northern Idaho, volunteers were gathering moose and deer carcasses and providing the meat to a food bank in Coeur d'Alene. Obviously they can't use sick animals, rotting carcasses, etc. But note that it's not always illegal to salvage meat in Oregon. For instance four years ago,
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife announced Monday that it is reinstating the permit held by Lois Tulleners, owner and manager of the White Wolf Sanctuary at Tidewater, had, since 1998. The permit allows her to take road killed animals as food for her wolves.
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Tulleners received a permit for the retrieval of dead deer and elk from public roads, and purchased a winch system with which to haul onto her pickup the carcasses. After she was told that her permit was being pulled, several state and local government agencies contacted ODFW to protest the decision.
Chris Wheaton, regional manager for ODFW, said the decision to remove the permit was not based on the sanctuary's profit or non-profit status, according to a March 12, 2004 letter to Tulleners. "The decision was made because it was decided that allowing the use of a public resource (deer and elk) to benefit a non-public entity is not an appropriate use of the state's wildlife resources," Wheaton said.
Rather than diving off into some of Oregon's laws regarding who can possess and sell what to whom...
Waste Disposal: Caltrans got into some trouble last fall in San Mateo County related to people discovering a couple of dump sites composed mostly of bleached bones.
Violating Caltrans policy, some road crew members used the remote sites apparently to save time rather than drive to a rendering plant or an animal shelter, Caltrans officials have said. Both sites are located in areas where deer often are hit by cars.
Domestic animals are supposed to be taken to animal shelters for possible identification. The boneyards got folks asking around to see what other agencies were doing with their corpses.
Steve Martarano, spokesman for California Fish & Game, said Friday that "sometimes we do leave them for nature to take its course, but we don't have any dumping sites or anything like that."
What local wardens do with roadkill "depends on the situation and the area," according to Martarano. "In a remote area, we may take it off to the side of the road or down the hill. When we do that, we are very conscious of water issues."
If the agency needs to dispose of a drugged animal that had to be euthanized, fish and game employees will take the carcass to a rendering plant "because we don't want those drugs in the environment," he said.
But rendering is getting increasingly expensive, especially if there isn't a plant nearby. Heck, just collecting the animals costs money. In Illinois, the state has decided to save by letting nature do the work.
The state's transportation department says it won't be picking up as much roadkill left along roads because it spent too much of its budget during the winter.
IDOT says it spent more than twice the allotted $40 million on clearing ice and snow removal because of rising fuel costs and harsh weather last winter.
Dead animals in driving lanes and any deemed hazardous to motorists will be removed. But much of the rest will be left for scavengers.
Some creatures will certainly be happy.
Making Mulch: In New York, more than 75,000 deer alone become roadkill each year. Little wonder the state has been a pioneer in composting carcasses.
Using a simple composting technique, the Cornell Waste Management Institute (CWMI) discovered it takes about a year to turn deer carcasses into compost that can be used for landscaping purposes along the very roadsides that were the animals' death sites. The cost of composting a deer: less than $25 a carcass.Obviously, not a large percentage of roadkill is salvageable.
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Increasingly, state, county and local highway departments are actively turning to composting to solve the ubiquitous deer problem. Already more than a dozen composting sites, called animal piles, have been established around the state, including one long "windrow" installed by the NYSDOT in Ulster County that, over time, has grown to contain 700 carcasses.
Composting animal carcasses is not new; chickens, pigs, calves, cows and even whales have been composted, according CWMI. Federal- and state-funded research conducted by Harrison and CWMI staff members Jean Bonhotal and Mary Schwarz shows that, for deer, passively aerated piles -- essentially elongated piles of wood chips in which deer carcasses are placed side-by-side -- are not only inexpensive but protect human health and the environment.
Microbial action in the pile causes it to heat up. Once the internal temperature reaches 110 degrees Fahrenheit, natural processes decompose the carcass within six months. The high temperatures and microbial processes during composting greatly reduce or kill most pathogens, minimizing the chance of spreading disease. It takes a year to make usable compost, according to Harrison.
One of those concerns is the following...
Chronic wasting disease has not been detected among wild deer in Montana but exists in some border states and provinces, and likely will show up in deer here, said Feldner, wasting disease coordinator for the wildlife department.
He said composting will not defeat chronic wasting disease prions, which are complex proteins, and there could be a risk of transferring the illness to deer through environmental contamination from sick, composted animals.
Research continues.
Not Just Roadkill: Another factor is contributing to the adoption of carcass composting in part of Montana. Grizzlies are drawn to the dead--especially in the Fall--for a nutritious meal. That became problematic in the Blackfoot Valley when grizzlies started recolonizing the area and visiting the boneyards on ranches.
Faced with a growing population of the endangered bears in the Blackfoot Valley, a coalition of landowners, agencies and conservationists is disposing of livestock carcasses by sending them to the landfill or a compost pile.
Since 2003, the project has removed more than 1,000 livestock carcasses and reduced the number of conflicts between grizzlies and people to nearly zero in the Blackfoot Valley, where the bears are recolonizing former habitat that long ago was converted to ranch land, officials said.
The Montana Department of Transportation operates four composting sites in the Blackfoot Valley, saving the Missoula district about $140 per day in dealing with roadkill. MDOT used to either drag the carcasses into nearby brush or take them to a landfill. One of the four composting sites in the Valley has been made available to ranchers, though they use separate piles.
The project's partners include the Blackfoot Challenge, MDOT, ranchers, FWP, the state Department of Environmental Quality, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Natural Resources Conservation Service and Allied Waste.
The livestock composting costs $12,000 to $15,000 a year, which is funded by donations from ranchers, grants and other funds.
The composting areas are surrounded with electric fence to keep the grizzlies and other unwelcome visitors out.
Montana cooks the carcasses more quickly than does New York.
The “cooking piles” are built on an asphalt pad, where the carcasses are placed atop a layer of wood chips. A layer of previously composted material is heaped on that, followed by another layer of wood chips. Workers add water and stir the material to accelerate the decomposition.
The wood chips and decomposing carcasses can heat up to more than 170 degrees, creating large piles of what looks and smells like black mulch - except for a few thigh bones and hooves, which also eventually disintegrate.
The piles finish decomposing after about a month in the summer and about 45 days in the winter.
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MDOT has accumulated about 500 tons of the finished mulch at its composting sites in west-central Montana. The mulch is being stored on site until state authorities decide whether it can be spread along roadsides to grow native grasses.
Label it organic and it will sell.
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