VANCOUVER, B.C. — High-tech roadside cameras are being implemented in B.C. in an effort to curb roadkill on the province’s highways.

The program, which is slated to start in May, will see an infrared camera system installed in the Kootenays, which will take live video snapshots of a stretch of highway several kilometres in length. It will then relay the images to a computer that will warn drivers of any animals on the highway or in the ditches on a brightly lit digital sign.

The Insurance Corp. of B.C. (ICBC) shelled out about $23 million in claims due to vehicle-wildlife collisions. That has prompted ICBC to help fund the project with partners QWIP Technologies and its subsidiary, InTransTech Inc.

“We have high hopes for this,” says ICBC’s manager of material damage loss prevention, Graham Gilfillian. “It’s kind of excited NASA too, that someone was going to take one of their inventions and use it for something like this.” NASA first developed the cameras for use in space technology, and the equipment has actually been inducted into the Space Foundation Hall of Fame.

If the May test in B.C. is successful, the company that is implementing the technology says it could be in use across the continent before long.