For humans, highways are dangerous, but for animals, they’re deadly. A new state fee could help save some wildlife and other animals. This is thanks to Colorado House Bill 26-141, which cleared the Legislature today.

Between 2010 and 2024, the Colorado Department of Transportation reported more than 54,189 wildlife-vehicle collisions, resulting in 48 human fatalities and 5,152 injuries to drivers and passengers. 

That picture is incomplete. For one thing, the department reckons that crashes with wildlife are underreported by as much as two-thirds. In 2024, approximately 7,500 animals were killed on roads across Colorado, according to roadkill data from the department, with over half of those carcasses being mule deer.

See Google map below, showing vehicle-wildlife collisions between 2010 and 2024.

The state says protecting wildlife corridors improves the vitality of ungulate herds that support Colorado’s $65.8 billion outdoor recreation economy. According to 2023 data, Colorado has the highest average annual costs associated with wildlife-vehicle collisions of any state in the west, paying approximately $321 million, adjusted to 2025 dollars, each year in property damage, emergency response, and other costs from large wildlife collisions. 

This economic impact also includes an estimated $25 million in lost value to the state for the thousands of wild animals slaughtered in these collisions.  Colorado Parks and Wildlife estimates that 2% of Colorado’s Western Slope mule deer does are killed by collisions with motor vehicles every year. More does are killed by cars than can legally be killed by hunters.

But some relief is at hand. Wildlife crossings built within important wildlife corridors are highly effective at reducing wildlife-vehicle collisions, thereby increasing public safety, reducing the high costs associated with these accidents, and improving habitat connectivity, the state says. 

For example, CDOT says, the 2016 Colorado State Highway 9 mitigation project reduced collisions between motor vehicles and wildlife by 92% in the five years after its construction. Additionally, the project significantly improved the ability of wildlife, including deer, elk, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, black bears, mountain lions, bobcats, and coyotes, to safely cross the road.  

This is a non-controversial move. The 2024 Colorado College’s State of the Rockies Project Conservation in the West poll found that 87% of Colorado voters support wildlife crossings across major highways on known migration routes.  

If you care about wildlife, as most people do, pony up that $5 optional fee next time you renew your license plate. The animals can’t thank you, but it they could, they most certainly would.