Wildlife Corridor Grant Fund; established, wildlife carcass removal tracking, reports.
SB 1341 creates a new Wildlife Corridor Grant Fund in the state treasury to support projects that preserve or enhance wildlife corridors and related wildlife crossing infrastructure. The fund would be nonreverting and could receive appropriations, gifts, donations, grants, and other funds. Grants would be awarded through criteria developed collaboratively by the Departments of Conservation and Recreation, Forestry, Transportation, and Wildlife Resources, with priority given to projects that advance the Wildlife Corridor Action Plan, reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions, protect infrastructure, connect conserved lands, benefit threatened or endangered species, or leverage federal funding.
The bill also directs the Department of Transportation to establish and administer a wildlife crossing program for highways, including consideration of large-animal crash risk during planning and scoping for highway projects. It requires the department to incorporate the Wildlife Corridor Action Plan into its policies and procedures and to report biennially to the General Assembly on implementation efforts, corridor and crossing updates, and future goals. In addition, the bill requires highway maintenance contracts to include wildlife carcass removal tracking, including the location and species of each carcass removed, using the department’s tracking application or a successor tool.
The bill would add three new Code of Virginia sections: one establishing the Wildlife Corridor Grant Fund in Title 29.1 and two in Title 33.2 directing transportation-related wildlife crossing planning and carcass-removal data collection. It would expand the responsibilities of several state agencies, especially the Department of Transportation and the Department of Wildlife Resources, and create a new grant mechanism for state, local, regional, tribal, nonprofit, and academic applicants to fund wildlife corridor and crossing projects. The measure also formalizes reporting requirements to the General Assembly and public, and it would affect highway project planning, maintenance contracting, and interagency coordination on conservation and transportation infrastructure.
The available vote history suggests strong committee support: the bill was reported from the Senate Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources Committee on a 14-0 vote with a substitute, then rereferred to Finance and Appropriations. No committee transcript was provided, but the unanimous vote indicates broad agreement on the bill’s goals. Overall, the bill appears to have been received positively as a conservation and transportation safety measure.
No specific objections are documented in the provided materials, and the committee vote was unanimous. The main policy questions implied by the bill are likely practical rather than ideological: how the grant fund will be financed, how projects will be scored and prioritized, how much administrative and maintenance spending should be allowed, and how the new requirements will affect transportation planning and maintenance operations. Potential stakeholders include transportation agencies, conservation groups, local governments, tribes, and applicants seeking grant funding, but no explicit opposition is shown in the record provided.