![]() ![]() “I saw that Weber State had a really established technical geography program with cartography, or map skills, and geospatial data,” he said. Taking their advice, he started investigating cartography in high school, which led him to Weber State, not far from his hometown of Evanston, Wyoming. His parents encouraged him to think back to the interests he had as a child. When he got older and was starting to consider his career, he wasn’t sure what to pursue, Amy said. It was statistics, it was major rivers and the countries they were flowing through. “We thought that was interesting - that such a young boy was studying all about the world,” she said. When his interest in atlases developed, his parents bought him the real thing, even though they were well beyond his age level because “they don’t make little kid atlas books, or they didn’t then,” said his mom, Amy Erickson. “My parents bought me my first world atlas when I was like 6, and I used it so much that the bindings and the book fell apart. “I’ve loved geography and maps since I was 4 years old,” Erickson said. ![]() You might say he’s been working on it since before he was in kindergarten. Now that he’s identified a location, he is working on publishing his research in a scientific journal, sharing the results with several government entities that would need to approve the overpass, and collaborating with Dorsey and other Weber State advisors to explore raising private funds for the project.įor Erickson, it’s been a long road to complete his thesis and graduate in December. Though he submitted his thesis at the end of November, Erickson plans to continue work on the project for several years. Using the DNR roadkill data, which covers a recent three-year period, Erickson estimated that there were 353 car collisions with deer, elk and moose near the Henefer site, totaling at least $1.2 million in insurance claims. The average person’s insurance claim for a deer collision is $3,400, he said. “It was overwhelmingly the most important area in my research.”įinding a place that’s ideal for construction and for wildlife shows the value of this kind of research, Erickson said - but those aren’t the only benefits. “At the site near Henefer, the building area was most suitable, and it was also the highest need area,” Erickson. He ruled out the Morgan site due to building challenges presented by the terrain. “Essentially, he's looking at how to connect wildlife migration corridors that sometimes cross state, or even interstate, roadways,” said Erickson’s advisor, Bryan Dorsey, professor of geography.Įrickson’s approach yielded a short list of three potential locations for a wildlife overpass: one that’s two miles southeast of Henefer on I-84 in Summit County another at the interchange of I-80 and I-84 at the mouth of Echo Canyon, not far from the Henefer site and a third near the city of Morgan, in Morgan County.Īfter assessing these sites using a drone and other tools, as documented in this video, Erickson concluded that the best location is the one southeast of Henefer, near Leonards Canyon. He overlaid this map with another map of the animals’ habitats, also provided by DNR, to find habitat areas that are fragmented by major roads. There has already been similar research on this issue in northern Utah, Erickson said, but it hasn’t been extensive across his region of focus.ĭrawing upon the skills he learned while earning Weber State’s advanced certificate in geospatial analysis, Erickson mapped the areas where deer, elk, and moose are most frequently hit by cars, using roadkill data from the Utah Department of Natural Resources (DNR). Since its construction, the Parleys overpass has drawn significant wildlife traffic away from Interstate 80, preventing car collisions with animals in the area. OGDEN, Utah – A soon-to-be Weber State University graduate has identified an ideal location in northern Utah for a wildlife overpass, which if built would eliminate a death trap for deer, elk, and moose along a stretch of Interstate 84, making the road safer for motorists.įor his senior thesis, geography major Timber Erickson examined potential locations in Davis, Weber, Morgan, Cache, Summit and Rich counties for a wildlife overpass similar to the one built in Parleys Canyon in 2018. Weber State Senior Proposes Location for Wildlife Overpass in Northern Utah ![]()
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