NAIROBI, Kenya — How did the elephants cross the road? They went underneath it.
Dusk had settled on Mount Kenya’s slopes, and traffic had slowed to a trickle on the region’s major highway. That’s when three elephants crossed through Africa’s first dedicated elephant underpass, a new solution to the increasing problem of animal- human conflict in Africa.
The $250,000, 15-foot-high tunnel, built with donor funds, has connected two wilderness areas and two distinct elephant populations separated for years by human development.
“The first time we had a report about an elephant going under the underpass, it was very exciting. We didn’t expect it to happen so quickly,” said Susie Weeks, executive officer of the Mount Kenya Trust, one of the partners in the tunnel project. “They actually managed to go through it within days of it being opened.”
The elephant underpass might be the first in Africa, but not the world. China and India have elephant underpasses. In the U.S., a winner was announced Sunday in a contest to design a highway wildlife crossing in Vail aimed at reducing collisions between cars and deer, coyote and bighorn sheep.
