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10,000 TIMES WILDLIFE WAS GIVEN ANOTHER OPTION
A wildlife overpass in Washington has reached an extraordinary milestone, demonstrating what can happen when infrastructure is designed with wildlife in mind.
Interstate 90 cuts through Washington’s Cascade Mountains at Snoqualmie Pass, creating a formidable barrier across habitat used by wildlife.
But instead of simply accepting wildlife-vehicle collisions and habitat fragmentation as unavoidable consequences of highways, Washington has been building another option:
Give wildlife a safer way across.
In July 2026, the wildlife overcrossing spanning I-90 recorded its 10,000th documented successful animal crossing, according to the Washington State Department of Transportation.
And that’s only part of the story.
Nearly 40,000 wildlife crossings have been documented throughout the Snoqualmie Pass corridor since 2014, using the overpass and 11 undercrossings.
These structures are part of a much larger effort to improve I-90 while reconnecting habitat divided by the highway. WSDOT specifically identifies wildlife connectivity as an objective of the project, using bridges, culverts and other crossing structures to improve wildlife movement while protecting the traveling public.
And the work isn’t finished.
Additional phases of the I-90 Snoqualmie Pass East project continue to incorporate wildlife crossings and habitat connectivity as the highway is improved.
There is something particularly encouraging about this conservation story.
Wildlife didn’t need to be captured, trained, displayed or conditioned to interact with people.
We changed our infrastructure instead.
We identified a barrier humans had created and designed a way for wildlife to navigate it on their own terms.
That is coexistence made tangible.
A wildlife crossing doesn’t eliminate every challenge created when highways fragment habitat. But 10,000 documented trips across a bridge built specifically for animals represents something worth celebrating:
10,000 times wildlife was given another option.
And nearly 40,000 documented crossings across the broader corridor demonstrate how infrastructure can be designed not only around where people need to go—but around where wildlife needs to move.
Sometimes conservation means protecting wildlife from what we’ve built.
And sometimes progress means rebuilding a connection we once interrupted.
KeepingWildlifeWild.org
Sources: Washington State Department of Transportation; September 11, 2026 reporting on the 10,000-crossing milestone.
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