Driver hits, kills black bear on Moose-Wilson Road

JACKSON (WNE) — It was about 8:40 a.m. Thursday and Les Brunker was on his way to the gym when he saw a police car parked on the side of Highway 390.

A black bear’s lifeless body was visible in the grass nearby.

Earlier that clear, fall morning, a driver had hit and killed the bear.

The bear’s death is the most recent vehicle-caused wildlife killing on 390, better known as Moose-Wilson Road. or the Village Road.

Over the past decade, drivers have killed scores of moose along the West Bank highway, prompting calls for reduced speed limits. 

The Wyoming Department of Transportation reduced speeds in 2012 but hasn’t acquiesced since — the speed limit on the road is already lower than the speed people drive, officials have said. 

The DOT is, however, installing a handful of wildlife crossings and fencing around the intersection of highways 22 and 390 to reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions.

Mike Boyce, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s large carnivore biologist, confirmed that the bear was a subadult female, without a collar or other markings suggesting she had previously been handled by humans.

Bears are hit by cars far less frequently than ungulates, he added.

“It seems they’re a little more savvy with traffic,” Boyce said. “It does happen, but definitely not at the rate the deer and moose get hit.”

Boyce, like staff at Jackson Hole Wildlife Foundation, said people should follow recommendations for driving in wildlife country: Follow the speed limit and slow down, increase your following distance, use high beams at night, scan the road’s edge for wildlife, and expect other animals to follow if one crosses the road.

Anyone who hits a bear, Boyce said, should call Game and Fish immediately, and leave it alone in case it’s injured.

This story was published on September 21, 2024.