It has been increasingly difficult for wildlife to safely cross the section of Interstate 4 that bisects the southern edge of the Green Swamp Area of Critical State Concern since it opened to traffic more than half a century ago.\n<\/p>\n
Ancient Islands members Marian and John Ryan have been working to secure such a crossing since 1992, but have encountered repeated delays by transportation officials.\n<\/p>\n
Some relief may be on the far horizon.\n<\/p>\n
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is reviewing a permit to install wildlife crossings under I-4 east of County Road 557 through sections of Hilochee Wildlife Management Area.\n<\/p>\n
This will come in connection with the planned future widening of this section of the highway sometime in the future\u2014the project is unfunded– and as a result the construction schedule for this section or a section farther east in Polk County is undetermined.\n<\/p>\n
The only crossing beneath this section of I-4 today is a narrow crossing between two upland areas that was built to allow vehicles and cattle to cross after the original highway project divided a private ranch that once occupied the property.\n<\/p>\n
The proposed wildlife crossing , which is to be located between the existing underpass and the County Road 557 interchange, would accommodate movement of wildlife inhabiting wetlands.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It has been increasingly difficult for wildlife to safely cross the section of Interstate 4 that bisects the southern edge of the Green Swamp Area of Critical State Concern since it opened to traffic more than half a century ago. Ancient Islands members Marian and John Ryan have been working to secure such a crossing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gci"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=985"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":986,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985\/revisions\/986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}