On the face of it, little connects Canadian democracy with roadkill. Yet the year ends with concerns about both.
Wildlife experts raised the alarm last week about the number of grizzlies being killed by trains barreling through national parks in the Rocky Mountains. A report by Parks Canada counted 63 grizzlies killed in an eight-year period, most of them by trains and most of them females of cub-rearing age.
The slaughter is much greater, and involves all kinds of wildlife, when collisions outside the Rocky Mountain parks are included.
At about this time last year, while riding a train across Canada, a conductor told me bull moose during rutting season are particularly vulnerable. They’ve been known to charge trains head-on. The impact is hard enough to jolt the front car, but the results are predictably unfortunate.
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