This is so freaking awesome!

[csziggy]

27. Now there are several of those bridges!

That's pretty cool. I wish they would do that along the rural road I have to travel. There are lots of dead squirrels along the route. It's supposed to be a canopy road with trees arching over the road but with power lines and hurricane damage the canopy is not as complete as it used to be, so the squirrels - and other animals - take the land route.

Along US 27 north of town they built bridges under the road for the turtles. There is a big lake next to the road and one arm of the lake was cut off. The turtles like to breed in that arm, even decades after the highway was built and would get run over. Since they built the bridge no turtles have been killed - before over 2700 had been killed on that stretch of highway.

Lake Jackson Ecopassage
Tallahassee, Florida

Located in northern Leon County, Lake Jackson is internationally known for sport fishing and for the trophy large-mouth bass that swim in its shallow waters. The 4,000-acre lake is normally about seven feet deep, but has two major sinkholes that are each approximately 28 feet deep. These sinkholes cause wide fluctuations in water levels, so much so that the lake fully dries out about every 25 years.

Designated as an Aquatic Preserve by the State of Florida, Lake Jackson also boasts a variety of wetland habitats, and thus has a high diversity and abundance of wildlife living in its waters and on surrounding shores. Especially abundant at Lake Jackson are birds, amphibians, and reptiles.

In the 1920s, a state highway was constructed on the western side of Lake Jackson. This highway, which would have been illegal to build under present-day environmental laws, effectively separated the lake into two parts. Now a four-lane road, the highway is traveled by more than 22,000 cars per day.

Driving along the road in February of 2000, Matt Aresco, a doctoral graduate student in herpetology at Florida State University, noticed some dead turtles in the roadway. Stopping to take a look, he spent several hours moving remains from the roadway and, in that one afternoon, collected 90 carcasses from the eastern side of highway 27. Deciding to take action, Aresco and a group of volunteers began spending countless hours monitoring the stretch of roadway, transporting turtles across, and petitioning for a permanent solution. In the first 40 days, before they were able to construct a temporary fence, they discovered 439 dead turtles. In the first five years of monitoring, volunteers hand-collected, measured, and transported 8,800 turtles across the road; in the same time period, 11,178 dead animals and reptiles were found. With a 98% mortality rate, this area of roadway had the highest documented road mortality (for animals) of any in the world.

More: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/lake-jackson-ecopassage