According to Bane Nor, between 1,400 and 2,000 animals, mainly reindeer and moose, are run over and killed by trains every year. Nordlandsbana between Trondheim and Bodø has accounted for around 800 of these, and the situation has been worst in Mo i Rana and the infamous Dunderlandsdalen. Last winter over 100 moose were hit here, and it has been like this for several decades without anything being done. But in February last year, the municipality, the county and Bane Nor got together to do something. They did so after news last year wrote about a veterinarian and several neighbors who had had enough of bloody elk carcasses in the snow. The measure they agreed on has worked. – Not a single moose has been run over since then, says a neighbor of the railway, Leif Egil Amundsen. – An adventure Amundsen runs a farm just a few meters from the railway and has seen the animal tragedy up close for several years. He never thought he would get to experience what he sees now. – It is an adventure. I can hardly believe it, he says. After the emergency meeting between the Ministry of Transport, Nordland county, Bane Nor and Rana municipality, a 2.5 meter high fence was erected in record time last summer to protect against the moose. – After we built this this summer, we have had no collisions. That’s according to Bane Nor’s project manager for measures against animal collisions, Per Øyvind Mohus. He calls the result sensational and gratifying. – What is startling is that so many people have come together and done their utmost to make this possible, he says and adds: – We have learned that it is possible to get things done quickly, if everyone just wants to. – Then something happened that Amundsen has experienced several nights out searching for injured animals around the railway. Last year he told news about sightings of calves with their feet torn off and moose mothers run over. – Then something happened, says Amundsen. He even brought out a moose fetus that had popped out of its mother when the moose cow was hit by the train. This is what the moose fetus that Amundsen found along the railway tracks looked like. Photo: Lars-Petter Kalkenberg / news He believes that this has been the reason why something has finally been done about the case. – Fantastic as it is now anyway. And in the summer, five new kilometers of moose fencing will be installed in Dunderlandsdalen. – It is expensive It still took several decades of collisions before it was decided that a fence should go up. – Why did it take so long? – Bane Nor has worked with measures on game drives in the worst places. Gradually this became one of the worst, as the former worst places got a fence, says Mohus. He says that there are both advantages and disadvantages to such an obstacle. Leif Egil Amundsen and the local community were tired of seeing red in the snow along the railway tracks. Photo: Lars-Petter Kalkenberg / news – On the one hand, it is an advantage that no animals are hit and animal welfare is good. On the other hand, there are animals that have trouble crossing the train lines, says Mohus. He says Bane Nor is also often unsure whether the problem will only move on if they put up a fence, but exactly in Dunderlandsdalen it seems to have been the solution. – It is expensive to build, but it works.
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Went from a hundred to zero moose hit – news Nordland
