Alberta Transportation (AT) is enhancing roadway safety by twinning Highway 63 from Atmore
to Fort McMurray (240 km study area), one of Alberta’s most important transportation corridors.
As part of this commitment to safety, AT recognizes the opportunity to better understand
wildlife-vehicle collisions to help address the resultant property damage and risk to human life.
The media have coined Highway 63 as “Alberta’s Deadliest Highway”, with wildlife-vehicle
collisions representing about 45% of all reported vehicle accidents, and the frequency of wildlifevehicle
collisions are expected to increase with rising traffic volumes, white-tailed deer range
expansions, and abundant deer and moose populations.
Alberta Transportation retained Tetra Tech EBA Inc. (Tetra Tech EBA) to carry out long-term
construction monitoring covering a wide range of physical and biological attributes associated
with the twinning works, including studies to gain an understanding of wildlife movement zones,
locations prone to wildlife-vehicle collisions, and the magnitude of the issue along this route. This
led to the development of the Alberta Wildlife Watch (AWW) smartphone application (app) by
the project team (Figure 1) to address AT’s challenging commitment, and is incorporated into
the long-term monitoring plan for highway mitigations.
