World’s largest urban wildlife crossing will be a ‘game changer’
CONSTRUCTION has begun on the world’s largest urban wildlife crossing, to give mountain lions, coyotes and deer a safe route into California’s Santa Monica mountains.
A $90million bridge will be built over a motorway and feeder road 35 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles in what has been called a “game changer” for wild animals caught in Southern California’s urban sprawl.
“This wildlife crossing could not have come at a better time. It is truly a game changer,” said Jeff Sikich, a biologist for the National Park Service.
The start of the project “sets a path toward saving our local mountain lions and supporting the diversity of wildlife in this whole region”, he added.
The bridge will stretch 200 feet (61 metres) over US 101 to give big cats, coyotes, deer and other wildlife a safe path to the nearby Santa Monica Mountains. It is expected to be completed by early 2025 and will be named the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, after the philanthropist whose foundation donated $25million.
About 300,000 cars a day travel that stretch of the 10-lane motorway in Agoura Hills, a small city surrounded by a patchwork of protected wildland that the new crossing will connect.
The star of the fundraising campaign to build the bridge was mountain lion P-22, who travelled across motorways and made his home in a huge LA park.
While he is unlikely to use the span because he lives many miles away, P-22 became a symbol of the shrinking genetic diversity of wild animals that become all but trapped by sprawling development or risk becoming roadkill.
Scientists tracking mountain lions fitted with GPS collars found over decades that roads are largely confining animals in mountains that run along the Malibu coast and across the middle of LA to Griffith Park, where P-22 settled.
On Thursday, a mountain lion was struck and killed on a nearby freeway. At least 25 of the big cats have been killed on LA freeways since 2002. JP Rose, a senior attorney at the Centre for Biological Diversity, said these deaths are preventable if the state invests in more wildlife crossings. Such crossings – bridges and tunnels – are common in western Europe and Canada. A famous one in Banff National Park in Alberta spans the Trans-Canada Highway and is frequently used by bears, moose and elk.
Cara Lacey, project director for wildlife corridors and crossings project at the Nature Conservancy, said her organisation has been mapping out other wildlife crossings that she hopes can also be built so animals can seek out mates and food sources.
“We can do this everywhere,” she said. “We and our partners have a vision for reconnected California where wildlife does not have to compete with cars to cross roads.”