Editor’s note: Since this post was first published, wildlife crossings have gained wider adoption across North America. The thinking behind them remains as urgent as ever.

It’s with genuine Colorado pride that I share a selection of winning entries from the ARC Wildlife Crossing design competition.

Colorado is a complicated state — you can see that if you watch any election. It’s a swing state, yes, but the variation runs much deeper than red versus blue. It’s a place full of contradictions, and I mean that in the best possible way. Many people here love being outdoors and feel a deep attachment to the landscape. Some are conservationists, some are hunters, and most interestingly, many are both.

That kind of overlap — the blurring of tidy ideological lines — is common in Colorado. It’s like a whole state full of Teddy Roosevelts. And in a country increasingly pushed by media narratives toward black-and-white thinking, I find it heartening that there is still a place where a lot of people operate comfortably in shades of gray. It feels like exactly the right context for a project like this to take root.

I’ve driven I-70 across the Rockies more times than I can count. Anyone who has knows the drill: sudden snow, avalanches, blinding sun, skidding semis, elk where you least expect them. Wildlife is not incidental on that road — it’s part of the system. Designing a highway without accounting for animals has always felt like an oversight disguised as efficiency.

The ARC competition — led by ARC Wildlife Crossing — imagines a different approach. Near Vail, where the highway slices directly through established migration routes, designers were asked to envision crossings that allow animals to move safely across terrain we interrupted.

Once you see the problem clearly, it’s hard to unsee it. Roads fragment habitat. Migration routes break. Breeding populations shrink. These effects compound quietly but persistently over time.

What struck me most is how obvious the solution feels in hindsight. Wildlife crossings should not be exceptional gestures. They should be standard practice.

The same thinking applies at a much smaller scale. Gardens sit inside ecosystems too. Animals pass through whether we plan for them or not. Designing with wildlife in mind — rather than treating it as a problem to solve — often leads to better outcomes for everyone involved.

Working with animals is usually easier than working against them. And more durable.

The bridge itself is not yet funded. But projects like this don’t move forward on engineering alone. They move when enough people decide they represent the kind of future they want to build.