You Asked Us to Ask CDOT About the Elk on Wadsworth. Here’s What CDOT Said.

A stretch of Colorado Highway 121 (Wadsworth Boulevard) beside Chatfield Reservoir, where drivers have hit elk for years, could someday get two wildlife crossings. The Colorado Department of Transportation says the first step is a feasibility study, and that study still needs funding.⁸

Francesca Tordonato, CDOT Region 1 Environmental Program Manager and Ecologist, told Hooray News in an email interview on Oct. 26, 2026, that “it is definitely on our radar.”⁶⁸ No construction is funded or scheduled yet.⁸

The road runs through one of Colorado’s worst counties for these crashes. CDOT data for 2010 to 2024 puts Jefferson County third in the state, with 2,808 wildlife-vehicle collisions.⁷ A May 2026 Jeffco Transcript article, citing State Patrol statistics, ranks it second, behind La Plata County.⁶

A viewer’s request about elk on Wadsworth

The question came from a Hooray News YouTube viewer who drives Wadsworth past Chatfield Reservoir four to six days a week. He asked us to pass along a request for a wildlife crossing. Over the years he has watched plenty of elk cross that road and has seen many of them hit. CDOT put up a warning sign, he wrote, and the strikes have kept happening.⁸

Hooray News emailed CDOT Region 1 on Oct. 25, and the agency answered the next day.⁸ Tordonato said CDOT has been working with Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Douglas County and Jefferson County on the corridor, and that some groundwork is already done:

“We have already completed a wildlife vehicle collision (WVC) and land use analysis- so we have already narrowed down potential locations to advance to a feasibility study.”

“We hope to obtain some funds to initiate a feasibility study,” she said. “The feasibility study would determine the best locations for two wildlife crossing structures along the SH 121 corridor between MP 0-4 adjacent to Chatfield Reservoir.”⁸ MP means milepost, so that is roughly the first four miles of the highway. The study would also gather information for future grant applications or for money from a new state fund.⁸

Colorado’s new $5 wildlife collision fee

That fund comes from Senate Bill 26-141, which Gov. Jared Polis signed in May 2026.² “It will allow Coloradans to give $5.00 on annual vehicle registrations and the funds generated will go to fund wildlife safety projects,” Tordonato said.⁸

The fee starts Jan. 1, 2027, and has not been collected yet. It is added to the registration unless the driver declines, and declining doesn’t affect the registration. It applies only to registrations done online or in person at a DMV office, not at kiosks or by mail. Each vehicle is charged separately each year.¹

Three quarters of the money goes to building wildlife safety projects and one quarter to habitat and connectivity work.⁴ Pew estimated the fee will raise more than $4 million a year. Pew also puts the total cost of wildlife-vehicle collisions in Colorado at $321 million, the highest of any western state.² From 2010 to 2025, those crashes killed 52 motorists and seriously injured more than 400.⁵

What CDOT says drove the I-25 crash drop

Our Oct. 21 story covered the 91% drop in wildlife crashes on I-25 between Larkspur and Monument.⁹ The Colorado Sun reported only two animal collisions there in about 10 months after the Greenland Wildlife Overpass opened in December 2025.³ Two crashes is a small number over a short window, and fall migration season is only starting.

Chuck Attardo, an environmental manager at CDOT, told Hooray News that the drop came from five underpasses built in the Greenland area in 2022, part of the $450 million I-25 South Gap Project. He said CDOT doesn’t expect the number to improve much because of the new overpass.⁸

So why build a 209-by-200-foot bridge for animals? It was recommended in a 2018 environmental assessment of the project, Attardo said, and the big animals have opinions about tunnels. “It gives wildlife choices; elk and pronghorn prefer these large overpasses vs the large underpasses that were constructed as part of the GAP,” he said. The overpass is expected to link habitat on the east and west sides of the interstate. “This is something we are already seeing in our camera feeds that Francesca is logging.”⁸³

For Wadsworth, the next step is finding money for the feasibility study. Attardo’s view of the whole effort: “It seems impossible until you do it!”⁸