BOZEMAN, Mont. — On a dark highway near Anchorage, Specialist Steven Cavanaugh of the Army, who had survived 300 missions in Iraq, was critically injured in December when his vehicle hit a moose. Specialist Cavanaugh died Dec. 6.

In the early morning darkness in Lincoln, Mont., in October, a pickup slammed into a 830-pound grizzly bear. The driver survived, but the bear was among seven grizzlies — a record for one year — killed by vehicles this year statewide.

Wildlife-related crashes are a growing problem on rural roads around the country. The accidents increased 50 percent from 1990 to 2004, based on the most recent federal data, according to the Western Transportation Institute at Montana State University here.

The basic problem is that rural roads are being traveled by more and more people, many of them living in far-flung subdivisions. Each year, about 200 people are killed in as many as two million wildlife-related crashes at a cost of more than $8 billion, the institute estimated in a report prepared for the National Academies of Science.

Ninety percent of the accidents occur on rural two-lane roads, and the most common animal involved is a deer.

"I knew it was a big bear, but I didn't know it was a grizzly," said Steve Sandru, the driver who hit the bear near Lincoln on the way to his job as a logger. "A grizzly was the last thing I expected to see."

The human death toll has risen from 111 in 1995 to around 200 in 2005, the most recent year for which figures are available. Officials say better designed highways would help lower the number.

"If you reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions, you would in all likelihood reduce fatalities," said Rob Ament, research director for the Western Transportation Institute. "The priority would be to treat the hot spots, the areas with the most accidents."

In addition to the loss of life, the accidents can be expensive. The average cost of a deer collision is $8,000, including repair, towing and cleaning up the carcass, while hitting an elk averages $18,000. If the driver strikes a much larger moose, expenses average about $30,000.

The total cost of the accidents to insurance companies exceeds $1 billion a year, the institute estimates. Pennsylvania has the most vehicle-wildlife crashes. Drivers there struck nearly 97,000 deer in the last half of 2005 and first half of 2006, according to estimates by State Farm, the insurance company.

In the report prepared for the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies of Science, the Montana institute said the number of wildlife crashes was far greater than federal statistics suggested — about 300,000 crashes involving wildlife are reported to the authorities a year — because many of the accidents are reported only to insurance companies.

In recent years, the institute estimates based on insurance industry data, the number of crashes ranged from one million to two million.

Marcel Huijser, a researcher in Missoula, Mont., who prepared the report for the Montana institute, said underreporting of the accidents hindered efforts to prevent them.

Mr. Huijser added, "If you build a wildlife crossing in the wrong location, they won't use it or use it to the extent you want them to."

In a separate report delivered to Congress in November , the institute recommended ways to reduce wildlife-related accidents, including the construction of underpasses and overpasses with fences to keep wildlife off highways and directed toward safer crossings. Other methods include culling animals in places where accidents are numerous and "break-the-beam" systems, in which animals are fitted with collars that set off flashing lights when they approach a road.

Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada, has been a large laboratory for studying measures to prevent such collisions, which had been frequent on a four-lane highway that runs through the park in the heart of the wildlife-rich Canadian Rockies. Officials there have built 24 underpasses and overpasses, and the changes have reduced collisions by more than 80 percent, park officials said.

Researchers in Montana are conducting similar experiments along a stretch of Interstate 90 near Bozeman. They have built fences and an underpass to allow animals safe passage.

If they could duplicate the results in Banff, said Mr. Ament of the Western Transportation Institute, few animals and people would die and there would be substantial monetary savings as well.

"Wildlife accidents on Bozeman Pass cost the public a million a year" in crash costs, Mr. Ament said. "With an 80 percent reduction, that would be $800,000 in savings a year."

The accidents can also take a toll on precarious wildlife populations. The report prepared for Congress found that vehicle collisions were a major source of mortality for 21 federally endangered or threatened species, like the red wolf, kit fox, Key deer and Florida panther.

"It's a new and dubious record," Chris Servheen, grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, said of the seven grizzlies killed this year on Montana roads. "There are more bears and everybody drives faster, and so roads are more of a problem."

While the accidents are not threatening the bears' long-term survival, Mr. Servheen said, they do threaten the species' ability to expand its range.

The animal deaths can also be traumatic for many people.

In November, a truck driver plowed through a herd of bighorn sheep on Highway 200 near Thompson Falls, Mont. The sheep often congregate there because they eat a salty de-icer the highway department sprays on a treacherous stretch of road. More than 350 wild sheep have been killed here since 1985.

Despite numerous warning signs with flashing lights, witnesses say the truck's brake lights never came on as it drove through the herd, killing five adult ewes and two lambs. The driver was not injured. An investigator with the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks is looking into the accident to see if charges are warranted.

"A lot of people in Thompson Falls take pride in these sheep and are pretty upset," said Bruce Sterling, a wildlife biologist with the state in Thompson Falls.

 Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Filed at 7:06 p.m. ET

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Despite occasionally violent protests outside, the City Council voted Thursday in favor of demolishing some 4,500 public housing units, a milestone in the city's effort to balance its heritage and its hurricane rebuilding efforts.

The unanimous vote to permit the federal government to tear down four public housing developments -- a critical moment in a protracted fight between the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and residents, activists and preservationists -- followed hours of debate and periodic clashes in the street.

Police used chemical spray and stun guns as dozens of protesters tried to force their way into the packed City Council chamber. One woman was sprayed and dragged from the gates. Emergency workers took her away on a stretcher.

Another woman said she was stunned by officers, and still had what appeared to be a Taser wire hanging from her shirt.

''I was just standing, trying to get into my City Council meeting,'' said the dazed woman, Kim Ellis, who was taken away in an ambulance.

''Is this what democracy looks like?'' Bill Quigley, a Loyola University law professor who opposes demolition, said as he held a strand of Taser wire he said had been shot into another of the protesters.

Quigley said he believed the crackdown violated public meetings laws.

Protesters said they pushed against the iron gates that kept them out of the building because the Housing Authority of New Orleans had disproportionately allowed supporters of the demolition to pack the chambers.

After roughly 30 minutes of on-again-off-again struggle to get into the meeting, protesters fell back, continuously chanting with bullhorns. An afternoon storm thinned the demonstrators, some of whom had been waiting since 7 a.m. to enter, and the crowd disappeared altogether shortly after the afternoon vote.

At the peak of the confusion, some 70 protesters were facing about a dozen mounted police and 40 more law enforcement officers on foot.

Details on arrests were not immediately available.

The meeting itself was mostly peaceful, although an early fight in the chambers between protesters and police caused a brief interruption.

Some public housing residents repeated during the daylong debate that they welcome the plan to replace the decades-old structures with mixed-income housing.

Other residents and their advocates said they fear the plan will result in loss of badly needing housing for the city's low-income black residents.

The vote crossed racial lines, with the three black council members joining four whites.

HUD says about 3,000 families who once lived in New Orleans public housing remain scattered across the country, and social workers say the number of homeless people in the area has doubled to about 12,000.

There is no consensus on what's best for New Orleans' poor, even among public housing residents. Redevelopment would diminish the public housing stock and drive many into less stable voucher programs. Repair of brick and barracks-style projects badly damaged by Hurricane Katrina would keep intact poor but close-knit neighborhoods.

Mayor Ray Nagin said the resolution approved by the council includes language that will assure that public housing residents have a voice in the redevelopment plans.

Opponents were not immediately available for comment on the decision.

Thursday's vote was required before demolition work could begin, but several legal challenges to the plan have not been resolved.

 Copyright 2007 The Associated Press

NBC has made an ambitious deal, apparently the first of its kind, to buy a two-hour — or perhaps even three-hour — block of prime-time programming from outside producers, including Thom Beers, the creator of adventure documentary series like “Deadliest Catch” and “Ice Road Truckers.”

Under the plan, NBC has agreed to broadcast at least two new hours produced by Mr. Beers back to back on a single night, with many more hours possible. The terms guarantee Mr. Beers and his partners 30 hours of programs on NBC — three separate 10-episode series.

These 30 hours would come at a fraction of the cost of standard network scripted or reality programming, a factor that made the deal attractive to NBC.

The project is not related to the current strike by Hollywood writers but the background forces are somewhat similar as networks struggle to revise their financial formulas to face a future of diminishing ratings and growing uncertainties about how the Internet will figure in viewers’ choices. The programs, which are all documentary in style, would not have staff writers.

The principals in the arrangement are prominent television names, Gail Berman and Lloyd Braun, both former top network programmers, who created a production company that has what is known as a “first look” deal that gives NBC the first crack at buying their productions. Ms. Berman and Mr. Braun contracted with Mr. Beers to create the shows and then went to NBC to pitch the idea of filling an entire night — or at least two-thirds of it — with real-life action.

The idea for mounting a block of shows that would play together on a night started with conversations Ms. Berman and Mr. Braun had with NBC’s chief executive, Jeff Zucker, this year. The discussions centered on the way the broadcast networks have generally abandoned Saturday night, filling it with repeats because ratings on that night have been too low to sustain the high costs of original programs.

Ms. Berman and Mr. Braun suggested that a new form of lower-cost programming, perhaps as an entire three-hour block of shows. The producers were already fans of Mr. Beers’s shows. “It’s just about all I watch,” said Mr. Braun.

He declined to describe the specifics of the deal. But participants on both sides described its main elements, on condition that they not be identified because they had not been authorized to discuss specific terms. “It certainly has the potential to dramatically change the network economics of a given night,” Mr. Braun said.

In the past, networks have contracted with outside producers to assemble a slate of Saturday morning children’s programming— mostly cartoons— but networks have not commissioned outsiders previously to fill a block of prime-time programming.

The chief economic benefit of programs from Mr. Beers is that they are strikingly cheap to produce by network standards. Shows like “Ice Road Truckers” cost about well under $500,000 an hour, a modest figure next to a typical cost of about $3 million for an hourlong scripted network series. Conventional network reality shows are also much more expensive at $1.5 million to $2 million an hour. The producers will will split ownership with NBC, giving the network control of domestic rights and the producers the international rights.

After contracting with Mr. Beers to produce the shows, Ms. Berman and Mr. Braun met with NBC executives and pitched a roster of 10 potential series. The participants in the deal said that the NBC executives most involved were the two co-chairmen of the network’s entertainment division, Ben Silverman and Marc Graboff, both of whom were described as enthusiastic supporters of the idea. Neither would comment on the deal yesterday.

The original plan was to place the shows on Saturday night, the participants said — perhaps under an overall title, like “Saturday Night on the Edge.” But NBC declined to commit to Saturday for the shows, seeking to retain discretion on when to broadcast them. So the program block may be shown on any night — and at the moment Saturday is not the choice, one participant said. The contract commits NBC to run as at least a two-hour block, however.

NBC retained the right to cancel one or more of the linked shows if they perform below a certain ratings threshold; but it may not break up the block for any other reason — if it did, it would open the shows up to moving to another network, the participants said.

“Deadliest Catch,” which is shown on the Discovery Channel, and “Ice Road Truckers,” on the History Channel, have become among the most popular programs on cable television. The finale of “Ice Road Truckers” attracted close to 5 million viewers. Mr. Beers, a former producer at Turner Broadcasting and Paramount’s syndicated division, started his own company, Original Productions, in 1999, with a heavy emphasis on motorcycle shows and documentaries like “Plastic Surgery: Before and After” and “Ballroom Bootcamp.” The company’s signature hit was “Monster Garage,” in which a standard car was “monsterized” into another kind of machine.

The shows Mr. Beers and his partners are planning for NBC would not be ready to serve as fill-ins during the strike because they are unlikely to be seen until the third quarter of 2008. Mr. Beers uses real people in real situations in extreme locations like the Arctic. Shows set there have to be shot in warmer months, for example.

By the time the shows do get on the air, at least three of them will be finished shooting. Two will go on in the initial block with the third ready to replace any that might fall short in ratings, the participants said.

At the same time, NBC agreed to pay for several other ideas pitched by Mr. Beers to be turned into pilots. But these will be unlike any other pilots NBC makes, the participants in the deal said.

Instead of shooting hourlong pilot episodes, NBC plans to have Mr. Beers shoot 5- to 10-minute films on some topic that can then be tried out as reports on the network’s “Today” show or “Dateline” newsmagazine show.

 Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

At "Chicago," the cast had to do a run-through because the new leading man and two other stars joining the show — Vincent Pastore and Aida Turturro, of "The Sopranos" — had never rehearsed together.

At "Hairspray," the crew had to make sure that the complicated '60s-style sets were still working before they fitted one of the stars into his costume — an enormous squishy undergarment that is a combination padded bra and fat suit.

At "Mamma Mia," which has made all those Abba songs a fixture at the Winter Garden Theater since 2001, the cast warmed up around a piano outside the ladies' room, not far from the bar.

At "Wicked," the crew had to put water in the bubble-making contraption that carried the actress Annaleigh Ashford across the stage before her opening line, which took on multiple meanings: "It's good to see me, isn't it?"

So it went last night, on an unusual kind of opening night on Broadway. After a stagehands' strike that shut down all but eight Broadway theaters for 19 days, some shows raced the clock to get the curtain up. Others treated last night like pretty much any other night.

But it was not any other night. Beneath the show-must-go-on euphoria that came with the end of the strike was a definite undercurrent of worry: How much damage had the strike done to Broadway?

The consensus was that it was too soon to say.

"I don't know how long it will take to build back up, but I can tell you this: We're sold out this weekend — there won't be any seats," said Barry Weissler, a producer of "Chicago." "Maybe we can take these 19days and make them past history. We did it after 9/11 and after the musicians' strike. We can do it now."

The accord ending the stagehands' strike, the second walkout on Broadway in five years and the longest since 1975, was reached on Wednesday night, around the time the darkened shows usually let out. People who were involved in the negotiations said the producers won some flexibility on rules covering how many stagehands must work on a show, and when. In return, the stagehands won annual wage increases of up to 4.5 percent for five years.

But the timing of the settlement meant that the casts and crews of about 30 shows had less than 24 hours before last night's curtain, and the pressure was on. And getting a theater ready for a show after a three-week hiatus is like opening a dusty, neglected summer house after a long winter — if that summer house were full of complicated electronic equipment, moving floors and one-of-a-kind costumes.

"It's like Ringling Brothers is back in business," the actor Maxwell Caulfield said during a break after running through his "Razzle Dazzle" number in "Chicago" for the first time.

In theater after theater yesterday, technicians blew compressed air into audio consoles, spraying away dust. Stage carpenters lowered and raised backdrops. For "Hairspray," that meant balloons and stars for a sock hop scene, microphones for a television studio, and the storefront of Mr. Pinky's Hefty Hideaway.

There were lights to check and costumes to spiff up. At "Hairspray," five stylists worked in a cloud of — what else? — hairspray to reshape most of the bouffant wigs. They had deflated during 19 days of not being worn.

"You wouldn't leave your car in the garage for a month and then try and drive it off on a vacation without testing it out first," said Brian Munroe, the head carpenter for "Hairspray."

But the stagehands' relief at being back at work was tempered by caution. They said "Hairspray," a solid success with George Wendt, who played Norm on the 1980s sitcom "Cheers," would do fine. But other shows might not.

Jessica Morton, an assistant electrician, said she had taken a second job, at a wine shop near her apartment in Harlem, out of concern that the strike might last through the holidays.

Andrew Keister, a sound technician, said he was sure that the stagehands' union, Local 1 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, would ratify the deal. But he noted that the Actors' Equity contract runs out next summer.

"Let's hope it doesn't get pushed this far," he said.

For their part, theatergoers lined up at the box offices through the day, with many shows discounting ticket prices deeply. Even the ticket sellers seemed to be caught up in the new reality that Broadway was going back to work. At the Ambassador, Jim Gatens called out the row and seat number of each ticket he sold as if the buyer had just won the lottery.

"Row J, center!" he told Ann Martorana of Manhattan as he handed her an envelope.

"We're just happy to see the public showing up again — at any price," he said.

In the theaters, the stagehands' rituals began hours before showtime. At "Hairspray," Mr. Munroe's crew went to work high above the stage at the Neil Simon Theater, on West 52nd Street. They greased winches and hoisted late-in-the-show backdrops out of the way.

Mr. Keister dusted off his audio console. "There have been a lot of rodents enjoying their free time here," he said, worrying that they might have chewed through the wires.

None had, he later concluded when he turned on the power and nothing shorted out. But the trouble-shooting continued through the afternoon, and less than an hour before showtime, the stagehands were still trying to fix a problem with one set of lights. With less than 40 minutes to go, they lowered the curtain. Two minutes later, the lights rotated and changed from white to blue. The electrical problem was fixed.

To root out the same kinds of problems, the crew of "Wicked" ran through the show, from the top. But the cast was nowhere to be seen, and the expensive orchestra seats were empty. Onstage at the Gershwin Theater, on West 51st Street, an electrician in a union sweatshirt paced back and forth, poking the buttons on a remote control device.

Then the bubble-spouting contraption that is supposed to carry Ms. Ashford, as Glinda, was hoisted into the air, and the crew spotted its first challenge: the machine had gone unused for so long that the soap solution had dried up. Water was added to the machine.

The run-through resumed, and an enormous mask — the "Oz head," as the crew called it — appeared.

This led to the kind of chatter, some over headsets, some not, that had not been heard since Nov. 10, the day the strike began.

"Oz head rotating," a stagehand announced. Another shouted, "Look up, stand clear!"

Seconds later, smoke filled the stage, as if something had caught fire. Anywhere else, that probably would have been a sign that something was wrong. But not in a show featuring the Wicked Witch of the West.

"All right, we got smoke! We're good!" said a voice crackling over a speaker.

That voice belonged to Mark Overton, the show's lead carpenter. He stopped for a moment to explain that the crew wanted to see that everything was functioning the way it was supposed to.

That was all he had time to say. A second later, Mr. Overton turned around and bellowed into his headset, "Bridge coming in!"

Behind him, a giant black bridge appeared onstage, and Mr. Overton rushed off to check on it.

"What was that awful noise?" another stagehand asked him. "Is that bad?"

Mr. Overton sounded as if he had forgotten what the mechanics of the show sound like after 19 days away. "No," he said, "I think it's normal."

At "Chicago," the day began with the dance captain, Gregory Butler, working on the "Razzle Dazzle" number with Mr. Caulfield and other cast members. Mr. Caulfield had starred with the London company of "Chicago" and was to have joined the New York cast on Nov. 13.

But that turned out to be the fourth day of the strike. His contract called for him to appear through Sunday, so as of last night, he had a very limited engagement — five performances. He and Mr. Weissler said it was not clear whether he would stay longer.

And then there was Ms. Turturro, appearing in her first Broadway musical.

"I'm a nervous wreck, but I'm excited," she said before going onstage for a rehearsal. "This is a marvelous cast. If I mess up a line, they know the lines. I'm sure in a few days, I'll be good."

And then, for the first time in 19 days, the lights went down and the music started.

 Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company