Skip to main content

Summer is here and so bears, moose and other animals on the road

Summertime, both north and south of the equator, brings more tourists onto the world’s roads that run through some of the planet’s most beautiful parks and nature reserves.
July 9, 2015 Read time: 2 mins

Summertime, both north and south of the equator, brings more tourists onto the world’s roads that run through some of the planet’s most beautiful parks and nature reserves.

But that also means more danger for animals who venture onto the highways, some which are killed by collisions with vehicles. Humans don’t always get off lightly, either, as province in Canada found out.

After hitting a moose at high speed, the 49-year-old man was stopped because the car was barely driveable, and also had moose parts buried in it. He was surprised when he was stopped, according to the report, saying he couldn’t recall the accident.

As much as park authorities try to discourage it, some people can’t resist stopping their car in a national park to get up close and personal with animals, such as this family from the US: http://http//www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-32679992

They stopped their car in Yellowstone National Park and immediately attracted the attention of one very large grizzly bear. Another grizzly as lurking close by, too. Fortunately, it was only the car’s paint job that got scratched.

Some people will take chances to get that great video of an animal on the side of the road, like this fellow here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JyjLgcyNCk, in Canada’s Jasper National Park. He got out of his car to film a moose. This is not recommended by park wardens and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, not to mention the photographer’s mother.

In Canada’s Kootenay National Park, next to the better known Banff National Park, a mother black bear was videoed helping her baby get over a high concrete roadside barrier. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/mother-bear-rescues-cub-from-b-c-highway-1.2648700

Related Content

  • VIDEO: Car owner’s manual – chapter one, snake removal
    October 26, 2016
    Snakes can get into the darnedest places, such as your car. The issue then becomes how to get it out. The answer is, with a lot of work and care as well as an equal amount of patience, such as possessed by the man in this video shot somewhere possibly in Southeast Asia Getting a small snake out of a car is tough. Getting a large one out is practically impossible - at least extracting the reptile in one piece and alive is.
  • It’s a deadly business for contractors painting road markings
    August 4, 2015
    Animal welfare groups in the Republic of Ireland are angry over the apparent insensitive act by a road making contractor who painted a yellow line over a dead cat on the side of the highway. A report by Irish newspapers quoted one person saying it was “shameful” and “nobody cared enough to move this poor cat who had been killed by a car and the line was painted over it”.
  • Losing your car ain’t as hard as you would think
    April 29, 2015
    Thankfully it doesn’t happen too often, but forgetting where you parked your car can be an embarrassing moment, or several days, as one man in the UK recently found. Jason Matthews, 40, ran the Manchester City Marathon on April 19 in five hours and 11 minutes and then spent an additional several hours looking for his Saab 93 Sport. He said he couldn’t recall where he had parked the vehicle. He walked back around some of the 26-mile – nearly 42km - course, before driving around in a taxi for 40 minutes an
  • Bristol, UK: when a parking space is just too small
    May 8, 2015
    People park in the smallest of places, despite the best efforts of urban street designers and town planners to ensure an orderly arrangement of suitably spaced cars. Surly some spaces are just too small to park even the smallest car. But the city of Bristol, in southwest England, has taken no chances and has painted the double yellow ‘no parking’ lines in areas no one in their right mind could squeeze a car. Click here to see just how small the space is that authorities in Bristol have felt they need