SALT LAKE CITY -- Every year dozens of cars zipping along the freeway through the alpine gateway of Parleys Canyon crash into deer, elk and moose, on rare occasions killing the people in the vehicle.

This fall the Utah Department of Transportation is using federal economic stimulus dollars to do something about it. Workers are building a 7-foot-6-inch fence to block the animals from both sides of the busiest crossing in a roughly three-mile stretch between the East Canyon and Lamb's Canyon exits.

It's all the $395,000 budget would allow, and it's anyone's guess whether it'll keep the animals from finding a new place to cross Interstate 80. After all, the north side of the road has a strong appeal for wildlife struggling through snow on the south: sunshine.

"They want to get up onto greener pastures," said Dale Liechty, a wildlife biologist with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. "On the (north) side of the road there it's south-facing slopes and it melts off quite readily."

The results often are ugly, according to UDOT statistics from 2005 to 2007, the most recent three years of compiled data. Especially when it comes to deer, the carcasses pile up every winter. In the 12 miles between Salt Lake City and Parleys Summit, crews removed 219 roadkill carcasses. Fifteen of those were moose and nine were elk, while most were deer.

Eighty-nine of the crashes happened in the stretch that UDOT now is fencing.

During the three-year span, no one in a vehicle was killed, though two of the accidents caused serious injuries. Previously, in 2004, a single crash killed three people.

The animals start out near the summit and come down a ridge south of the freeway this time of year as snow stacks up, Liechty said. They have a choice of following the ridge all the way down to near the Salt Lake Valley floor or crossing to those sunny northern slopes. Deer individually or in small groups are a constant threat, and elk sometimes cross in herds of dozens or more.

Moose, the most massive obstacles, are more random in their movements, Liechty said, because they're often content to hang out in chest-high snow.

Workers from West Valley City's United Fence Co. were stapling wire to wooden posts recently and expect to finish up in early December. Crew member Frank Brunson said he has seen several deer approach the fence and turn back since he's been on the job. A big buck came within 100 yards recently and watched the workers.

"I was kind of wondering if he could jump this," Brunson said. "I've seen them jump 6-foot fences and clear them."

UDOT designed the fence in consultation with state wildlife biologists, said Steve Poulsen, the engineer in charge of construction. Its height should block the animals better than the old right of way fences, which were 6 feet or shorter. The wire mesh also has narrower openings -- and in V shapes instead of rectangles -- to keep big game from getting hooves and antlers tangled.

Animals that still want to reach the north side may use the unfenced underpasses at each exit. The budget didn't allow for grated cattle guards at the on- and off-ramps, so crews painted white stripes on the pavement instead, hoping to fool the animals into believing there's a barrier.

"It will prevent (most) animals from getting inside the roadway between those two exits," Poulsen said. "But if they should (get inside), we've also included 15 escape ramps."

Those ramps lead to slots in the fencing where animals can leap down a 6-foot wall to the outside. That wall is meant to deter them from leaping the other way from outside the fence.